Slogging

Went through three more boxes of sheet music.

I kept the flute music. Theoretically, I will resume playing the flute, and that's already been mostly culled. I did skip over the high school and college marching music (and it's really no good, having just the flute part).

I kept a few books of the Irish music. I threw away* photocopied books and books of Irish music (in Irish and in English) and felt horrible at the waste of time in the first place when my father copied them.

*Paper gets recycled. Usable music gets donated. Most of the time the photocopied books are classified as "paper."

*sigh* But I won't have to carry them around from move to move. I won't have to move boxes and boxes of "music I might use someday" to get to the things that I'm looking for.

I did keep a cute old ukulele book. We do have a ukulele, at least.

Then there was the stuff from my father's college and post-undergrad days. He was heavily involved in Roman Catholic liturgical folk music. I kept a few folders-with-brads I thought my sisters might like (but I was too young to remember). I kept a few booklets of, well, junk, just because it had my father's name on it. (But I did give away duplicates, at least.) I threw out mimeographed sheets with "Cum By Ya" [sic] and other things. I kept a couple of liturgical music binders which were used in church when I was growing up. I occasionally get songs stuck in my head, and even though I'm not Catholic, and even though I've heard about "those post-Vatican-II musical atrocities," I still like them. It's sort of like comfort food.

Then there was the Christmas music. Really, I don't need twenty photocopies of "Joy to the World." They were all mixed in with everything else. In another box, there should be about 20 copies of one carol book, and I kept a book of carols for piano, and a couple of photocopies of my father's favorite Christmas carol ("The Cherry-Tree Carol": my husband also likes it because it reflects the Orthodox teaching in the first line: "When Joseph was an old man...").

There's only one box left in the first stack. Whew.

I also got something off my to-do list, which was to call the lady back about Irish dancing classes for Teddy. They do accept students as young as three, and the rates didn't seem unreasonable, and the first class is free. We'll try to go to the feis up in Clearwater this Saturday and see whether or not his interest is piqued. (She didn't know enough about an adult class, but I figure I can ask when we go. Not that I'm in shape enough to last through one dance, let alone an entire lesson, but that'll be another post.)

There're more thinks percolating around in my head, but I'll stop here and let them ferment a little more so there's a chance of fewer mixed metaphors when they do get poured out. (Did the metaphors there just make you go "blech," too? Well, that's why I'm stopping here.)