It's monsoon season in New Mexico, and for our desert cats this is both exciting and alarming all at once. They have rarely witnessed rain, let alone the thunder, lightning, and hail that often accompanies these desert storms. The afternoon monsoons cause them to cower under the bed, eyes wide and shining, or to huddle at my feet, for once silent and submissive.

These same weather patterns which brings these welcomed rains also bring with them more humidity and heat. While in comparison to the mid-west or east coast, our humidity levels are nothing to complain about, it is, nevertheless, more humid these days than normal. Our swamp cooler is working overtime, and doesn't have much success against humid, hot days. Although I relish living somewhere where central air-conditioning (or as people here say in hushed, reverent voices "refrigerated air") is, for the most part, unnecessary, this summer's combination of heat and humidity, makes many days unpleasant at best.

Such extreme temperatures have done nothing for the garden, either. While the rains have provided much needed moisture, the heat is defeating most plants. The big cobalt-blue pots that guard our side door overflowed with petunias for the first six weeks of the season, but now host plants that are withered up and tired. The rose bushes that showered me with blooms in May and June now sit bare–the leaves turning yellow and brown in the heat. I know there will be another crop of blooms later in the season, but right now everything has simply hunkered down in survival mode.

Several weeks ago, we discovered that we had a gift of about 24 free hours: a combination of a lighter than usual teaching schedule and Matt being off work caused the stars to be aligned in our favor for once. Spontaneously, we decided to get out of town for an overnight. After about ten minutes of tossing around ideas, we decided to drive down to Ruidoso–about three hours southeast of Albuquerque, a skiing village in the southernmost Rockies. Even after three years of living in this state, there is still so many places we have left to go: White Sands, Carlsbad Caverns, Four Corners, and the dozens of little artist and cultural villages and communities that have cropped up all over this region. It's so easy to get into a traveling rut: with Santa Fe and Taos just north of us, we head that direction more often than not when looking for a quick escape. But this time, Ruidoso was just what the doctor ordered: someplace new, with the cool, crisp air of the mountains, and just enough to do to fill an empty 24 hours. Arriving in late afternoon, we checked into our hotel and made a quick tour of the shops and restaurants in the center of the village–just enough to fill a couple of hours, stretch our legs, make us feel like we were on vacation, but not so much as to make us feel overwhelmed by the shortness of our visit. We had a wonderful dinner that night, and collapsed back in our room in time to catch the last two hours of Titanic on cable, and to witness a marvelous thunderstorm striking the mountains around us. All that, and we were back home by 2:00 the next afternoon. A perfect getaway.

It's good to remember that sometimes tiny bites of something wonderful--dark chocolate, an afternoon on the couch, 24 hours hitting the road and seeing someplace new-- can actually be enough. Too often, I convince myself that if it isn't a good helping of a desired treat, it isn't worth bothering. It is a gentle lesson to see evidence of small portions being just as filling–because too often, small portions are all I can fit into my too crowded life. I can manage one creative cooking project every several weeks, but I bow under the pressure of being innovative in the kitchen on a daily basis. When I can't carve out entire weekends off–sometimes a Saturday afternoon with nothing to do can give me a new lease on life, or at the very least, strength to face tomorrow. Even that short vacation ahead of us in a couple of weeks: a trip to Santa Fe and a couple of days in Colorado, could be enough to make us feel like we have gotten a real holiday carved out of our busy lives and schedules.

Even this summer, which due to my heavy teaching and performing schedule I have been quick to label as a sorry excuse for a summer, can also be redeemed if I focus the details a bit. While it hasn't been full of empty days or lazy afternoons (I haven't been swimming once, nor has a drop of lemonade passed my lips), I can claim the small things: the Saturday morning trips to the farmer's market and then the week of eating fresh locally grown produce, the peaches and plums sitting in a blue bowl on my dining room table, the basil plant ready to contribute flavor and taste to my salads and pastas, the load of towels that are drying in the sun, even the heat and humidity, which reminds me that I am getting summer whether I like it or not.

I long for the east coast notion of "summering." Such a lovely verb, but like anything, this season can be what I make of it. And so, as another afternoon thunderstorm descends upon us, a glass of iced tea sits at my side, a small token of summer.

We have become those annoying people who do little besides talk about their cats. Every evening, one of us reports to the other about the cat activity and behavior during the day. Every morning, I give Matt a rundown of the cat action during the night. At dinner parties, we shamelessly share cute and charming cat stories. People have started giving us feline paraphernalia. All in all, it is quite a problem.

There is a cat ritual that occurs every night in our bedroom. At some god-forsaken hour, Yun-Sun decides that it is time for a snack and proceeds to wake me up. (Never do the cats bother Matt. I am not sure what this means, but it surely doesn't say much for my dominance over my pets.) In my half-asleep state, I throw Yun-Sun out of the bedroom and lock the hook lock over the doorknob (which we installed because in our house the doors don't close securely enough to be cat-proof.). But one night after Yun-Sun's removal, she began crying at the door. This was too much for Godiva, who was still sleeping contentedly in our bed. "Yun-Sun needs me!" she must have thought to herself in her walnut-sized brain. "I must go rescue her." So Godiva leapt from the bed and ran to the door, jumped up with one paw stretched out and unhooked the latch. Soon, there were two cats back in bed. I was only partly awake during this scene and thought to myself, Surely what I think just happened didn't happen, and groggily got up and removed Yun-Sun (who was leaping merrily around the bed, using our bodies as a trampoline) once more. I relocked the latch and was just drifting off to sleep when I heard her crying at the door. Again, Godiva perked up. "I am coming, Yun-Sun!" she telecommunicated, and proceeded to unlock the door. One try. No pawing or missed attempts, or random flailing at the lock latch. One try and the door was open.

It is this new favorite conversation topic of ours that recently put us in a tight spot. One day about a month ago, Matt got a phone call at work from a woman only marginally associated with the church. She lives in Farmington, which is about two hours northwest of Albuquerque and has a daughter who sings in Matt's choir. When Matt returned her call, he discovered that she had phoned because she had heard that we were cat lovers and would probably be persuaded to take in an abandoned kitten she had rescued. That our reputation had grown to such extent that people two hours away are calling with free fluffy kittens alarms me greatly. Matt assured the woman that, while he was sympathetic to her cause, we were quite happy with the rapport between our current two cats and weren't looking to expand our family. (We get calls about kittens, my mother got calls about Korean babies. It really is the same genetic defect.)

A student arrived this week with the news that his neighbor just adopted a stray cat, which, on Monday, had a litter of six kittens. My student thinks he can adopt two, "What about you?" he asked me. I'm good for kittens, I assured him. He looked at me doubtfully. I have the feeling this isn't the last I will hear of this.

Today we are celebrating Godiva's first coming day. In my family of adopted Korean siblings, "coming days" were the days when my Korean brothers and sister arrived to our home. While these did not quite rival birthdays in importance, they were, nevertheless, an event involving presents, special foods, and showering of attention and goodwill by all. I grew up with a slight chip on my shoulder for not having the honor of a coming day, but here I am as an adult having fully adopted the tradition for my pets, who today are receiving astounding amounts of cats treats: gourmet seafood delight and yogurt. They might even get presents if only they appreciated them, but as one student remarked this week, "Your cats don't much like their cat toys." Sadly, it's true, aside from one ratty mouse and crumpled up wads of paper. In my wildest dreams, I never imagined myself to be a pet person, let alone in competition for the title of "crazy piano teacher cat lady." Yet, here we are, celebrating cat coming days.

A piano teacher colleague of mine tells the story of an adult who came into her lesson harried and flustered. She sat down and flailed her way through some elementary piano piece, then turned and said, "Well, I don't think I played any of the right notes, but you get the idea."

I have been playing entire performances like that. Summers in the past have meant much less playing and performing, and more time to learn stacks of music that I collect and pile up during the year: potential teaching pieces; recital pieces; pieces by composers that I don't know at all; pieces by composers that I turn to for inspiration and challenge again and again, even if I have no intention of ever playing their music in public. But this summer has allowed for none of that kind of work or exploration. In June, I played a recital with a couple of singers from NYC. Last Friday night, I played a recital with a flute player. This month Matt has put together "Thursday Night Musicales" to benefit a local charity, and on every one I have been accompanying singers, flute players, violinists. I shouldn't complain; all of this playing has been challenging and engaging, but I am exhausted. I am tired of being handed a pile of music that I have to learn and perform in just a matter of days. I am tired finishing one recital program only to have to sit down the next day and learn another one. I am tired of being silently confronted by the stack of music that I haven't been able to touch this summer. I realize that I will have to do something radical if I am to carve out time for the kind of summer music learning that I usually indulge in and that I rely upon to help me get through another year of whirlwind music-making.

Sometimes I think the statement "Well, I don't think I played any of the right notes, but you get the idea." could be my motto for life, carved on my gravestone, printed on my business cards. This is not how I would like it to be: I want to play the right notes and communicate the ideas as well. But instead I teach lessons where I am afraid not much more is being communicated than the general idea of music-making. I have entire teaching days where I didn't follow any of my beliefs about teaching or about mentoring in any concrete way, but I hope the students "got the idea." I have whole weeks and months and seasons (such as this one) where I think what I am living is a sham of an artistic life: I haven't had time to think or breathe, let alone allow for creative moments or to foster any artistic expression, but you get the idea.

Meanwhile, I have killed another orchid. I find this unbelievable. While I still have much learning ahead of me when it comes to gardening, I have long been quite successful with houseplants. But in the last four months, I have killed two orchids. And this is my year to grow orchids. This is doing nothing for my self-confidence.

Admittedly, I am not good at failure and I hate missing notes. While I believe that accepting that one can't do everything perfectly without some inevitable mistakes along the way is the recipe for personal happiness and joyous risk-taking, seeing the physical evidence of a dead orchid on my mantle is no fun. I'm no dummy; I can hide this little problem, I think to myself, I will simply stop growing orchids. Then I am the person who doesn't grow orchids, not the person who can't grow orchids. That is a lovely difference and redeems my self-esteem, however cowardly it may be.

In The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer writes that teaching is a private profession; we don't have any real way of knowing what one another does. I think this may be true for many of us, regardless of our choice of professions. I am a good teacher, but I could make lists of things that I don't know and should. There are huge, gaping holes in my background and knowledge that my glowing résumé hide quite nicely . Recently, a colleague has asked me if I would be interested in observing each other's lessons and swapping ideas. I love this concept, but I know that my reputation is in danger if I do this. She thinks I have my act together and there are 1001 ways in which I don't. In the same week, another piano teacher has asked if I would teach her son. I am honored by her request, but such week-to-week exposure to my teaching might only illuminate my weaknesses. The easiest thing would be to refuse both invitations–and keep my reputation intact. That would also be the cowardly thing.

In the interest of truth-telling, let me also admit that I haven't cleaned the bathroom in two weeks, I can't remember the last time I washed and changed the sheets, and at this moment, there are so many dishes piled in the sink, I will probably skip lunch so I won't have to face the kitchen. And although I have another pile of music to learn, a piano lesson to prepare for, and some teaching planning that I must do, I will probably take a nap this afternoon instead of getting ahead on any of this.

The problem is that to really change any of this would be revolutionary, almost counter-cultural. It is much easier to continue to play the role of superwoman, superteacher, superpianist. In that role, of course I can take on another student, another performance, another professional obligation. The idea of saying "no" to the next thing feels alien to my being, yet at this pace, nothing I am doing is particularly honest. I think about Tiger Woods and how he took a year off to work on his golf swing. I want to take a year off. I want to work on my teaching, my playing, my writing. I want to re-examine my attitudes and beliefs about life in general, and music in particular. I would like to have time to do more yoga poses, figure out how to not kill an orchid, bake bread. At the very least I would like to find out what it would like to live with a clean bathroom every day.

Unfortunately, unlike Tiger Woods, I don't feel like I can take a year off. Somehow, I have to rethink my playing, challenge my teaching, and find time for all the extras that I care about, even while hurling madly through my days at a breathtaking pace. If I manage to say no to the next great thing, I will be making a big step forward.

You get the idea.

I learned to read sitting on my father's lap, he pointing to words and I memorizing them for his approval. This did nothing for my ability later to sound out words phonetically, nor did it create any chance that I would ever be a good speller, but it did wonders for the father-daughter bond. And it made me a passionate reader.

In first grade I won an award for reading the most books–221. I still have the certificate. Most of my childhood was spent either on the piano bench or on the couch with a book. Summer days were chances for all-day reading marathons and I devoured entire sections of our small Kansas library. Some books I reread so many times that my name would be the only one on the checkout card for months.

In spite of the busyness that has crept in over the years, the school assignments that pushed out pleasure reading, the long schedules that left no time for books, I haven't ever stopped reading. Certainly, there are times when it takes me months to finish even the slimmest read, because I am so tired when I finally lie in bed and open a book that I fall asleep almost immediately. Nevertheless, in tiny movements, I keep reading.

Seasons like this past spring make me wonder if I did anything fun at all, but a look through my journals reveals my footprints. Lists of books are scrawled throughout the pages, giving a hint to my haphazard ways of chronicling my life as I find the titles crammed in between to-do lists: call Anna, go to the music store, look for another Mozart piece, rewrite book review, Piano Shop in the Left Bank. A-ha! There it is! Evidence that I am still a reader.

Several months ago Matt brought home the brochure announcing the summer reading program at the local public library. "Look!" he teased, "It's for all ages. And there are prizes." He still finds roundabout ways of reminding me of the fact that once, during an especially low period of my life, I hung my old first-grade reading certificate on the refrigerator to remind myself that I could, in fact, accomplish things. But in spite of his jesting, a summer reading program entices me. Oh, not the one sponsored by the library, but one of my own–a chance to give myself permission once again to spend the summer reading.

It's been too long since my reading list hasn't been full of "should reads": books for class, books that someone recommended, books that I have collected with the hope that they will somehow change my life, or at the very least, my teaching or performing. Often times those "should books" are wonderful and life-affirming: I read Peace Like a River this spring because a friend had loaned it to us and I felt guilty because it sat unopened on a shelf for eight months. After I finished it, I, in turn, have recommended it to everyone I know. I reread Flow in preparation for the class I was teaching at UNM, but it rocked my world inside out, making me think and question for weeks. The Time Traveler's Wife was another guilt-read, shoved upon me by a friend, but I enjoyed it immensely. However, what would a summer of "no-guilt books allowed" look like?

It doesn't seem like this summer will be the chance to find out. While the official start to summer only arrived a few weeks ago, for all intents and purposes my summer is halfway over. I shudder as I write this, for only weeks ago I was so optimistic about the possibilities of the season. But school begins here on August 11; I start my fall teaching schedule on August 14, allowing only two short weeks between the end of the summer schedule and the beginning of the fall semester. Already in that time we have planned a trip to Santa Fe to meet up with friends and to go to the opera. Afterwards, we want to sneak up to Colorado for a few days. I have a trip to Lubbock for a piano lesson tentatively scheduled and Matt is talking about making a trek to Kansas City during that period. So much for empty vacation time. For those of us who live by school calendars, the summer is halfway gone.

In the face of this, it is hard not to be the person for whom the glass is half-empty. Just last week while on the plane to Lubbock (It's pretty sad when the regular trips I am making are to Lubbock, Texas, regardless of the reason.), I sat next to an older woman reading the latest Vogue. My same copy of this weighty journal of intellectual thought has sat unopened on the counter for days. If I can't even manage to read Vogue, what are the chances that this is my great summer of reading?

Some of my favorite people in the world are friends with whom when we get together the subject quickly turns to what we have been reading. One of these same friends called us last night with the message, "Don't start a new book. I just sent you one." My own list these days is short, but here's what I've been reading :

*Peace Like A River by Leif Enger

*Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

*The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

*The Piano Shop on the Left Bank by Thad Carhart

*Piano Pieces by Russell Sherman

*Ready for Anything by David Allen

*Home Thinking by Winifred Gallagher

*The Musician's Spirit by James Jordan

*A Strong West Wind by Gail Caldwell

*A Year in the World by Francis Mayes

*The Perfect Wrong Note by William Westney

Happy reading.