Cold day tomorrow! 🥶

I love leaving a rehearsal and coming out to surprise snow. It was a good 3 inches at least! And yet no snow at home 🤔 curious.

Cool my hands are so dry that my knuckles are cracking and bleeding. I blame having to wash my hands 1,000,000 times a day after getting pink eye 🫩 lotion is doing nothing. I need to like dip my hands in melted Vaseline or something.

If you see this, we IMPLORE YOU to post a picture from whatever device you’re using without explanation.

Sitzprobe for All Shook Up! My three musicals for January really could not be more different!

I’m wearing very warm sweatpants and a sweater, slippers and I’m wrapped in a down blanket and I’m still FREEZING 🥶

We closed Phantom today with a completely sold out weekend! Now on to All Shook Up which starts…tomorrow 🤪 Is Reed Left like Left Shark??

My eye is very red and sore for no reason 😖

So after some research if I want to order a custom case from the company I would have to pay a 50% tariff because they’re in Brazil 😵‍💫 Thanks, Orange Menace 🖕🏼 Which also explains why so many vendors are sold out of them because they also don’t want to pay a 50% tariff 🙄

My husband and I went to trivia tonight on a whim and we won! I hosted bar trivia for about 6 years so I haven’t played myself in a really really long time. Good to know the ol’ brain has still got it 💪🏼

Lesson with a 7th grade oboe student I notice they are not breathing & I’m getting slightly concerned they might pass out or die. Me: Did you breathe? Student: I circle breathed M: 😮 You know how to circular breathe?? S: Yes M: HOW??? S: I taught myself M: 🫨 WHAT?!? S: I just figured it out one day

It’s short film festival time again! Submissions are due February 19th.

WTF - what the frost

One of my students had a grand maul seizure during class today. How was your Tuesday??

It’s been a good 25+ year run but the zipper on my ob/EH case bit the dust today. It’s been sticking & not moving smoothly for a while but today it decided it’s stuck stuck & won’t even open 😩 They don’t make the clamshell style BAM case anymore 😭 I don’t really like their current case it’s so boxy.

When I got asked to play in Jekyll & Hyde this summer I wasn’t sure how it would be playing in a musical for that long. The original run was 11 weeks, 44 shows. The closest I had done was Secret Garden which ran about 2 months back in college a million years ago. Also my first ever musical!!

Playing my first D&D game tonight since early September. DM: a cat-like creature scurries away Me: I go “pspspspsps” DM: roll animal handling *rolls 19* DM: you successfully get the creature to come out and let you pet it

Ready or not, its my first Phantom show today!

I should go run today but it was raining and then snowing so it seemed too gross out and I’m just going to lay on my couch instead.

One of our neighbors got a new 10-week old puppy and we just met him on our walk! Such a cute little babby 🥹 he didn’t quite understand that Molly is an elderly lady and couldn’t play with him, but they had lots of good sniffs and tail wags.

Just played our 50th Jekyll & Hyde show! 🤩 (44 for me) Crazy to think I’d ever play a musical run this long, but it’s been such a great experience. Just two more left!! 🥹😭

Life goals

This one was disappointingly fairly normal. Just a picture of my husband’s uncle who recently passed away and his daughter. It was still very large and really weirdly cropped and blown up so it was blurry and pixelated though, so it’s still got that going for it.

My 2026 gigs are starting to come together! January - finishing up Jekyll & Hyde, then Phantom and All Shook Up April - Mary Poppins May/June - Something Rotten

My to be read pile is up to 888 books. This is unsustainable and untenable. I have to make some changes in my life.

First day back teaching 8-5 and I’m so tired 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

I posted this before, but I was walking out of my childhood bedroom in high school and somehow managed in one second to hit my toe with the door trying to open it, which caused it to slam shut on my arm, which then bounced open and hit me in the forehead. Truly three stooges shit.

Who wants to talk about reeds???? No one?? Well ok 🥺 How about musicals? *ducks*

Omg I totally forgot to post this! Everyone at Jekyll & Hyde got letters from Santa right before break! It is the cutest thing ever 🥹 they were personalized and it even mentions my specific instruments! Santa is the best.

Back to the grind

I have J&H tonight which is weird to have only one Monday show ever, but kinda secretly glad that bc of it I had to cancel almost all of my lessons and I can ease back into the semester a little. Tomorrow is a normal full day of teaching. 5 J&H shows to go and 1 Phantom show on Sunday!

The amount of emails I have received this morning is too damn high

My husband sleeping in bed next to me. I sneeze super loud 5 times, nothing. I fart the teensiest, tiniest little fart you’ve ever heard and he wakes up and says “did you just fart??” 😑

Sitzprobe for Phantom! No, not that one. The other one.

I bought new gloves less than a week ago and I somehow managed to lose one after wearing them exactly two times 😤

The wigs in season 5 of Stranger Things are so bad.

Haha I hope I remember how to play the oboe 😅

I have Jekyll & Hyde tonight and I’m sure it will be great and fun to play with everyone again, but I am so not ready to go back to work yet 😭 12 days off was great (rip my embouchure tonight) and much needed, but most of it was not a vacation or a break spending a week at my parent’s house.

I got four new friends on StoryGraph today! Yay! Please add me if you’re on there!

Hi, I’m the umbilical cord that wrapped itself around my neck while I was being delivered! I’m also ironically an EF-4 tornado, but that wasn’t as deadly in this case.

The Giver by Lois Lowry. Still my favorite of all time.

Quote skeet with the most recent picture of your pet

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I read 48 books in 2025! I switched to StoryGraph to track my books because Amazon owns goodreads. Come join me or add me as a friend if you’re on there! @hwinters717 Here are my full stats: app.thestorygraph.com/wrap-up/2025...

Getting stretched after running a RAGNAR relay - “Wow your muscles are freakily flexible!” Um, thanks?

It was in the 60s almost the entire week we were in TN, but then the last day we were there the temp dropped 30 degrees 🥶 it was 19 and snowing when we left this morning! I guess that will prepare me for Chicago weather when we get home.

Ya’ll my FIL ordered another custom picture. Anyone want to take guesses on what it is until my husband picks it up????

I had a cheerwine float at cook out and that definitely fixed me. For today at least.

Had a fun adventure crawling under my parent’s house to the dirt crawlspace to replace glass fuses so I could have hot water to take a shower 😵‍💫 old houses are fun!

I love sitting here listening to my dad call random far-flung relatives I’ve never met having the same conversations about me like I’m not just sitting right next to him 🙄 That isn’t uncomfortable or awkward at all.