IrishOboe

Some days everything seems to go wrong and other days everything seems to line up.  Most days are a bit in between, but here is an account of one day to give you (and my future self) a glimpse into daily life here in our new home in Emmen.

6am Stephan’s alarm goes off. I’m already awake because Joseph needed a snack.  He just want back to sleep so I do too.

6:15am get up and follow my morning routine:

Get dressed. Do a quick sweep of the floors. Process my physical inbox for five minutes. Water the plants.  See the chives, marjoram and tomato grow!!!

10 minutes of “nesting” or making the house a bit nicer than it was the day before, today I wiped the coffee table, de-cluttered the window sill and arranged the candles there, found a home for some oversized sheet music that had been sitting around since the move, etc.

6:45am Joseph wakes up.  I drop what I’m doing (nesting) and greet him.  He pees on the potty.  We dump it in the toilet together and play a little.  I get us breakfast.  Today he ate two little slices of bread and three scoops of yogurt.  I had toast.  I wipe up the high chair and table and notice Joseph grunting so I put him on the pot.  Success!  For some reason he also grunts before having to pee.  We take care of the pee, say goodbye to Daddy as he goes off to work, I do the dishes and we play a little together and nurse (I don’t remember how often we play and nurse but it’s here and there and whenever).  I finish my morning routine:

Open all windows to air out apartment (so humidity doesn’t get high enough for mold to continue to grow)

“Swish and Swipe” bathroom (wipe surfaces and toilet, brush toilet bowl) – 4min

8:30ish I start to work on my “important daily cards” where I alternate 10 or so minutes on a task with 10 or so minutes of focused play with Joseph.  This morning practice was first up so I got out my harp and worked on adjusting the bray pins until Joseph crawled over to me and I gave him a little harp lesson.  He loves the harp.  I’m trying to teach him to be gentle.  He actually seems to have learned a bit how to be gentle and has a better plucking technique than he did before.  It used to be the “grab five strings and pull with all your might never releasing the fingers” and now it’s “grab one to three strings and pull sometimes releasing the fingers and making a nice sound.”  I call the improvement, especially since he’s only had three lessons.  What a smart kid!  I tell him he can’t bother me while I’m practicing (it’s only 10 minutes!) and he listens until I’m almost done then when he comes to grab the strings while I’m doing a run-through of a piece I tell him “no” while I’m playing (that takes brain power!) and he starts crying.  Fortunately I’m at the end of my practice session and we can make up.  Total time the harp is out: 15 minutes.  Not up to conservatory standards but I’ve learned how to make the most of the minutes I have.

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Long ago in the innocent days of pregnancy I agreed to play a concert in October with the thought that I should have life with a three-month-old down well enough to see how working as a musician might work with kids.  Well, the date changed to September and the organization has been complicated, but I successfully performed the concert on Saturday.  The jury is still out on whether it’s worth it or not.  I enjoyed having a reason to practice (though moments at home that can be used for focused work are few andfar between) and I enjoyed rehearsing with the musicians.  It is quite an ordeal to get the whole family to Strasbourg (about 2 hours of travel time door to door) and I’m not sure what I would have had to pay a babysitter for an all-day affair three weekends in a row.  Joseph and Stephan were happy to have some father-son time, but it wasn’t easy on any of us.  It’s hard for me to concentrate these days, and concentrating on rehearsal when you can hear your baby screaming is no easy, nor pleasant task.  That said, it all went rather better than I expected, but the whole system trusts chance a bit too much for my comfort level – even with faith in a good God.  What if my son got sick when I had to play the concert?  Would I abandon my son or abandon the concert?  It’s not a happy thought.  As it was, I was sick and terribly exhausted from a night of less than three hours of sleep and having had no nap all week.  I was up at 5am with Joseph feeling like calling in sick, but that’s not possible for a musician.  The show must go on.  You have to be ON at a certain time and date, and that’s that.  That’s why they pay us the big bucks.

So, about those big bucks.  It’s always so hard to justify them to myself and others.  In high school professional pay was great, but I always thought it must be hard to live off.  I’ve long wondered just how much I get an hour for a gig if I factored in all my expenses and time.  The question is even more important now that I have a patron (my husband) and a dependant and it’s possible that my time is more important than the cash.  I determined to take meticulous notes of the hours and dimes I spent for this gig so I could evaluate it rationally after the fact.  I don’t know how to factor in the cost of my husband’s time (two Saturdays and a Sunday gone) or the stress of playing a concert half dead.  I’d like to add a couple hundred Euro for that, but musicians don’t get sick leave or maternity time or any benefits at all, and I don’t know how to factor those costs in either.  Nor do I know how much amortization of the expense of my harp to factor in or how much of the cost of the fives strings I had to replace while preparing for the gig (at 10 Francs a pop).  So, I’ll just give the bare numbers and we can know it’s actually a bit worse than that.  Fortunately, Europe pays musicians better than the US does so my hourly rate turned out to be a whopping 9.03 Euro an hour.  That doesn’t include the commute or lunch break.  If I include the commute, because as a musician without regular work, the place a concert is means time away from practice and other gigs and is not consistent, then the sum is a voluminous 7.06 Euro an hour.  For those not in the know the Euro is dropping now so those numbers correspond to 12.11USD (11.89CHF) and 9.47USD (9.29CHF).  I think I’d have to pay a babysitter more than that.  It’s a good thing Switzerland doesn’t have a minimum wage or I’d risk making less than it.

Is it fun? Yes and no.  Is it worth it?  Hm, I wonder how long it would take me to recover the cost of music school at that rate?

We’d been thinking about it for quite some time, but we finally acted and we couldn’t be happier.  Take a look at our new baby! (More)