Piano Camp I

If you were to spend any time at all at Piano Camp,

you would observe one or both of these things:

1) Kristen and I being brilliant.  

2) Kristen and I talking about how brilliant we are.  

This year, we decided more of the United States of America needed to benefit from all we had to offer them, and so we gathered a few piano playing kiddos in Kristen's new hometown, and:

changed their lives.

Being brilliant is not an easy job, just in case you were wondering.  Piano Camp days are typically spent pulling out our hair,

refraining from pulling out theirs.

The days are long, you see, as we herd children from one place to the next, exerting massive units of energy in order to convince them they can actually be expressive pianists, selling our very souls in order to retrieve from them the sound we want, the musical thinking we expect.

Our evenings, by necessity then, are spent in other important piano camp activities.

First, we engage in extreme competition 

(some of us more than others.)

Then,

 there is the consumption of excellent food,

such as these sweet potato and beet gnocchi.

(The benefit of being in Kristen's home was that we could also test the experimental wedding cake she had to make,

which we did not mind.)

Brilliance requires investment of course, so our evenings also involve a bit of work.  This year, however, we got a bit distracted when we were inexplicably joined by some random neighborhood animals,

 such as this weird little dog who established himself our guard.

After he wandered away (on his bizarrely short and stubby legs),

 this sweet little kitten

 hopped up in my lap,

 hopped down off my lap,

 went to check out Kristen,

 and wormed her way into our hearts.

(Her full-body-plants onto the nearest tree helped our general assessment of her all-over cuteness.)

When the bugs drove us inside,

 Ben treated us to some ridiculously delicious homemade ice cream, which--

after Kristen looked at the work before us in conjunction with the clock on the wall and cried in her most distressed voice, "how did this happen"?--

we finished off with more cake.

By the end of the week, however, our work was done;

and our brilliance paid off.

Those darlings played the piano like the little pianists we knew them to be, and brought us to fits of applause.

Following the closing recital we shook the hands of the parents, we rejoiced over high points of each child's playing.  Then, we packed it all up and reminded ourselves:

Next week?  We get to be brilliant all over again.  

See you in Harrisburg!