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How Miss Rachel Gets It Done

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Have you ever looked at someone and thought, “How in the world do they do everything that they do??”

A lot of people ask me that. And really, to me, I don’t do that much, but if you ask my husband, he’s constantly trying to get me to SIT DOWN. He thinks I do too much. But …. Who wants to be BORED?

On Mornings

5:30am: Alarm is yelling at me.… I press snooze until 6:15. (Unless Jackson wakes me up earlier and wants to go watch Little Einsteins in his living room.)

6:20: Drag myself out of bed and make a cup of coffee. Make sure the big boys are up. Their alarm goes off at 6:00, and PRAISE TO THE LORD FROM WHOM ALL BLESSINGS FLOW that they get themselves up and ready all on their OWN!!!!!! They are 11 and 7… so this is one area that I KNOW I’m WINNING IN!

6:25: Stand at closet and stare at 2870 pieces of clothing with no clue what to wear. Check Stitch Fix App for ideas.

6:30: Brush teeth, take daily meds, and vitamins, complain about the state of my skin and how I’m looking so old and when I’m 65 I’m going to look 70 and my young black husband will still look 30 because, well…you know……

6:35: Get dressed then sit at my dressing table and see what the girls are already saying in the group chat that morning whilst drinking my cup of coffee. The 6am Purple Wing conversation is pretty entertaining.

6:43: Another alarm goes off in the big boys’ room that tells them it’s time to go out to the bus.. yes, I send their little boy behinds to school on the bus! Eli goes out of necessity, because there is no way in the WORLD I would leave on time to take him to a different school, and Don just likes going with him… even though Don and I end up at the same school.

6:45: Always the question of the morning: am I wearing makeup today or no? … (I’m laughing at this thought… )

7:15: Get Jack to go tell Pun goodbye. This is particularly fun these days because Jack has started kissing people now; his little baby lips are extremely cold and wet…, but it’s still cute.

7:20: Drop Jackson at the Cruse’s house and scoop up their two oldest daughters to come to school with me.

7:21: Choose which musical icon we will listen to and discuss on the way to RPS. These girls have learned about Chicago, Ella Fitzgerald, Gloria Estafen, Mariah Carey, Peter Cetera, JaySean, NSync, Backstreet Boys, Beethoven, Tone Loc, and Randy Travis…

7:30: School, here we go.

Miss Rachel as Mrs. Valerie Frizzle in the Music Room

On Teaching Elementary Music and Performing:

I sure do love my job. I would not survive as a regular classroom teacher – everyone knows it’s true. I relish in teaching my own thing, coming up with my lessons, and not being roped into a box when it comes to teaching music. I used to teach to programs, using the songs that I would teach the children to perform as really the basis for most of my instruction, but unfortunately COVID has robbed me of my most favorite part of the job. We have not put on a school program since January of 2020. 😦

But at any rate, I still manage to get it done and have some level of fun in class even though we don’t do much singing anymore. Actually, after a decade of being “Miss Rachel” every day, (and singing the *(&%$#$! Pizza Song, my voice is TIRED! During Covid, I made YouTube music lessons for the virtual students at our school, and many times at school we sing along with the Miss Rachel from “Miss Rachel’s Music Room” on YouTube. Saves my voice!

Honestly, God in heaven made this job for me. It’s perfect. I go to work with my first love every single day.. (the piano!), I sing if I want to, I dance if I want to, if I wake up with Tony Bennett or Caetano Veloso on my mind, the kids hear about it, and the kids, THE KIDS – OUR kids here in Ripley, a very special population – especially at the Primary School genuinely LOVE you and will give unsolicited hugs all day and go insane when they see you in public… and I mean, WHO wouldn’t love that?? I’ve taught roughly 2500 kids in a decade’s time… I love seeing them all at Walmart.

I never get tired of making music. I never get tired of playing. I never get tired of practicing. I get REALLY excited when I get the chance to play a Steinway & Sons Grand Piano. (Hmmmmm Pun, My 40th birthday is coming up!!!!) The action on a thirty-year-old well-maintained Steinway grand piano is like touching hot buttered soul flowing down and all over a hot, steamy, sticky Cinnabon Bun. Not many things are better than that… and the music that ascends from an instrument of that caliber that can bring tears to any music loving person’s eyes. One fine day I’ll get to live with one. Maybe. In the meantime, I guess I’ll settle for my Kauai grand and perhaps will go through with the tramp stamp of the Steinway & Sons logo.

Making music is really my self-care. (That, and St. Pete Beach with Pun during dead period.) I played A LOT during my oldest boys’ formative years obviously because that was the most difficult time in my life and when you sit and pour your emotions out over a keyboard through music – especially good, hot-blooded, thick, and impassioned music, (did I just describe MYSELF??) you forget your reality and are literally transposed into a much more pleasant place despite the mess that may be encircling you at the moment. I tell ya, if you walk up my sidewalk on any given afternoon and you hear the fourth movement of any Beethoven Sonata… it ain’t a good time. Just send a text.

I really don’t HAVE to practice much these days though, at least not on the piano. I do get the itch every now and then to play a Chopin Nocturne or a Bach Prelude, or a Brahms Intermezzo, but the time for that just isn’t there most of the time. The last couple of months, the majority of my practice time is spent in a church sanctuary on a pipe organ, something I thought I’d never get back to, but my whole life is a series of events that I’d never thought I’d be doing, and those are the very things that seem to make life so much fun, right??

In fact… tell me something… what are the things in your life right now that you thought YOU’D never be doing??

Miss Rachel’s Top 5 Keys to Who She Is

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  1. Don’t you love second chances? I love second chances. I’m one of these lucky girls who was fortunate enough to get married young, figure out what NOT to do, divorce, and give it another try with a lot more life experience under my belt. Not saying my divorce was my doing, but hindsight is 20/20, ya know. I’m the wife of a high school football coach seven years my junior. What an adventure it’s been with this guy who has brought me to so many uncharted territories! We are opposites in practically every way and have such different backgrounds, but somehow, we find compromise and humor in our everyday lives – especially in the instances when we remember he was in the fifth grade when I was a senior in high school!

2. I never set out to be a mom. I was never the teenager who wanted to babysit or work in the nursery at church and I had never changed a diaper until that warm and very clear day in October of 2010 when I first met my oldest son Eli. He peed on the doctor before I actually saw his face and it was his diaper that was the first one I ever changed. I had another son, Don, a few years later, and then suddenly I found myself to be the single mom of 4-year-old and 8-month-old sons. Scary, scary times. It’s hard to mother whilst laying on the bathroom floor devastated from the failure of a marriage. But alas! The clouds did indeed part and I was blessed beyond measure not only with my husband, but with yet another son, Jack, my last chance at mothering another infant, another adventure which I would’ve never seen coming at age 38. If I had to describe my mothering style with one word, it would be “survivalist.” I do what needs to be done for my boys, I try to bring fun and laughter into most things, and sometimes we are a big disorganized, flustered mess, but I highly doubt my boys ever question whether or not they are loved by ALL of their parents.

3. Currently my favorite thing to do is to sit in my favorite chair beside a large window early in the morning, drink coffee, see who is out driving in my neighborhood, and read that week’s copy of New Yorker Magazine. I feel so artistic and connected to New York City when I read the articles and all the goings-on in the art world up there. Of course, it takes me the whole week to get through one issue because I have three sons and a husband and sometimes those articles are small novels! I love that my sister has gotten into producing abstract-like art and I’m slowly filling my home with her work. My favorites are the ones with lots of color – they really stand out on my obligatory gray living room walls.

4. Besides my family and music, food is my next favorite subject… I’m a FOODIE. I love food. No, no, you don’t understand, I Loooooovveeeee food. Food is my best friend…, well, one of them. And you can absolutely tell it by looking at me. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to lose weight, trying to count points and calories here and there…, but the fact of the matter is, is that I LOVE eating good food. At the end of a long day at school with 9000 children wanting to all sing the same song 100 times each, all I wanna do is whip up a huge pot of Smoky Tomato Bacon Pasta. Now there’s a dish… pasta, tomatoes, bacon, cream cheese…. What else could make you feel that good after a trying day ?

5. Someone that I love very much recently said to me, “Why are you ALWAYS laughing?” I guess maybe it’s because I’m constantly around people under the age of 8, or maybe because my spirit age is around 12 or so. Either way, the internal conversation with myself is always of the highest level of comedy and even when sitting quietly watching TV, or reading, or just sitting in a waiting room or something, you more than likely will hear me suddenly chuckle, at which point you probably will think, “WHAT is she laughing at ??” (The teacher next door to me frequently hears bursts of laughter coming from the other side of the wall but has never really questioned me about it.) My sister did confess to me that “it gets on people’s nerves!” My response to that is, if you think being constantly happy and laughing incessantly is a problem, then go find a grouch to hang out with!!!