The Merry Month of May

It’s a rainy day in May. Technically, it should be sunny and flowery and perhaps a bit windy, but usually the rainy season is finished by now. No cause for alarm. I remember a couple of decades back (before climate change was a household word )an outdoor school graduation in June being frantically re-located inside at another school because of rain.

I would be perfectly content to forego the picnic in the park and enjoy a cozy indoor day starting a new jigsaw puzzle listening to the pitter-patter of the raindrops. But the responsibilities of adult life are awaiting me, with their foot tapping and finger waving in the corner insisting that I stop playing around and pay attention to them. The piles on my desk are calling me over to slog through delinquent finances, prepare my overdue taxes, contact school alum with one more plea to sign up for an alumni concert before I cancel it and so on. This Peter Pan meekly putting down my toys and answering Wendy’s stern look with “Yes, dear.”

Of course, not before I write this little piece of fluff, another tool in my Procrastination Toolkit. Or look at the calendar to see what delights the merry month of May has in store. Tonight, I will ascend in the building I most hate in San Francisco—Sales Force Tower— to both play some piano and be an auctioneer at a community orchestra fund-raising event. I know I will be astounded by the view, but suspect it won’t change my feelings about this ugly wart on the SF skyline. My piano-playing starts exactly when the Warriors third game in the second playoff round begins. Darn!

Tomorrow, I’ll go with my sister to help celebrate the 50^th Anniversary of the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, in which she once danced and I accompanied dance classes for $3 an hour when I first moved here. Then it’s all hands-on-deck for the 5^th and 6^th grade Spring Concert at Children’s Day School where I’ve been co-teaching and will direct six of my pieces. There is my OLLI Jazz History Class and a neighborhood sing and another school sing and the weekly Jewish Home for the Aged piano play on my calendar squares and then all the things that don’t make it on paper— like a new project to memorize two Chopin pieces on piano and perhaps to return to a book project that I left after the first draft.

Forgive me for writing this all on a public Blog. There is no earthly reason why anyone else should be the least bit interested in my schedule and there is little here that hits any kind of universal vein. Except perhaps as a model of how to procrastinate yet more!

Now, about that jigsaw puzzle…