Start laughing hysterically at anything and everything

I usually hate Mondays for one reason only: trumpet lessons. Shudder. I am not the best performer so playing by myself in front of someone is really nerve-wracking. Because of my crazy schedule and my inability to say "no" to people, practicing in a deserted hallway of practice rooms late at night is not really appealing to me. I know I should practice more than I do, and it's only myself that's holding me back. But somehow today's lesson went actually really well. I found one of my weaknesses in playing - breathing. When you play, ideally the breath should be a straight line of air throughout. But for some ungodly reason I don't do that. Instead, my breath follows the line of music either up or down, which affects my sound and intonation. My teacher helped me with some of this today and I am going to have to work hard to get better. I think part of it is that I never got private lessons in junior high or high school, so I am lacking some of the basics and am now trying to catch up.
For one of my recital pieces I am playing Rondo For Lifey by Leonard Bernstein. He is one of my suprem-o favorite composer/conductor/teachers, so when Bryan mentioned this to me I jumped at the chance to play it. It's a fun little ditty, as they say, and I just busted it out today and for once Bryan didn't have too many bad things to say.



Most of the time he tears me apart, which is usually warranted by my lack of practice, but finally he was...dare i say... a teensy bit impressed?
HALLELUIA!!
I cannot tell you the grief this man causes me. All the time he's just like "I know you can do better, I want you to be a great player, take this to the next level" and I try, I really do. I really have to work at it and I struggle a lot. But today might have been a "breakthrough". Don't want to call things too quickly but it was totally different than most of my sucky lessons!
And you know what?
It makes me feel great.
And I no longer have a case of the Garfield Mondays.