A schooling....

for Mama today, in the challenges of distance parenting and being detached from her training/home life.

She doesn't like the boarding house Sunday routine. She's required to stay in bed until 8.30am. They get a small breakfast and then go to school for brunch at 11, not getting fed again until 5pm. Katies don't go 6 hours without food. Not happily. She was also feeling peopled out by then so spent much of the morning practicing to escape them. But she joined our church zoom at 11.30 and was very happy to see everyone, chatting confidently in front of them all about school. We were put in the same breakout room and again she talked well, being measured about her worries and sharing her joys.

She had to leave shortly before we'd finished to get ready for NCO online. I got a phone call. She couldn't make the log in work. We calmly dealt with that one. I got a second. An essential part of her bassoon had gone missing since the morning. She was not even slightly calm. She called me back after NCO, having not been able to play at all. Her tutor is also her bassoon mentor and she text me separately, and said Katie had been wobbly when she'd confessed to not being able to play. I spoke to Katie again at 730, expecting the house staff to have found it with her. It was still missing and Katie was in a state. I was a little curt with the house staff - at that point it was 8pm and she had an ensemble rehearsal in 12 hours time, the bassoon had not left the house all day. Someone had to do some better looking.

In other news, Katie showed me excitedly a wooded end of the house garden that her and her friend have been given permission to clear of weeds etc and are having a lovely time making nice with plans of then building a den. She said she's spending lots of time in the garden. Apart from school for meals, I don't think she'd gone anywhere so it doesn't surprise me that she needed outside time. The garden is very lovely too.