cahn

All the music people around me have been chunking the month in weeks. Get through this week; regroup, learn the music for next week; get through next week. It is December. Last week was the big week; one more week to go, but relatively light. (Which is good, because the Yuletide deadline was Tuesday and this is, uh, the second latest I've ever turned in my draft.)

( Me, grading the music I've had to do in the past month: )

Everyone in my family-of-origin had agreed months ago that going on cross-country plane flights this Christmas was not a good idea (I hate flying at Christmas at the best of times, but we usually suck it up to see family), so instead we'd made plans to hang out with my best friend and her family for the first time in two years and go skiing over winter break to try to reprise a really excellent trip we had right before covid. But sadly a combination of raised omicron risk and weather foxed all those plans (as I know many others' plans have fallen through as well, this year) -- though we did end up going skiing by ourselves for a couple of days before the marked probability of ice on the road in another day forced us out too. I suppose the upside of this is that I'll be around on the 25th to read and comment on Yuletide gifts instead of in a car (the original plan), although as usual for me, it will probably be evening my time before that happens :)

(Skiing was great the first day and somewhat miserable the second day -- we were only out for a couple of hours -- because it was raining the entire time. Although the nice thing was that A. got a ski lesson that second day (we weren't able to book him for one the first day), and he is exactly the right age to learn quickly, and the instructor was excellent.)

Our situation is also significantly better than that of my extended family, who (because my uncle is an extreme optimist, I guess) had planned a family reunion revolving around going skiing in Canada (we had bowed out of that trip quite a few months ago, what with the uncertainty in when vaccines would be available for kids and also international travel uncertainty over Christmas in a pandemic) and just canceled the reunion yesterday. Some of the younger cousins are still talking about going up to use the houses. (I hope my cousin with a one-month-old baby doesn't go up, which the last email mentioned might be the case. Pandemic and risk to child aside -- not to minimize those, but honestly my first reaction was, I think I'd have murdered my husband if he went for a ski vacation most of a week when our first child was a month old.)

Also, here, have some things I wrote almost two weeks ago now (so, before people started getting worried about omicron) but never posted:

-I think I forgot to mention that one of the things that has made December busy was (covid) shots for everyone! (We'd gotten flu shots a month earlier.) Really happy I was able to get a booster at a convenient location (closest pharmacy to our house!) in the morning; kiddos also got their second shots last week at a convenient time for us (and I scheduled it at the pharmacy across the street from our favorite Indian takeout place, so we had some to celebrate). YAY all around. Kiddos also had zero side effects, not even any tenderness at the site, so I'm really really pleased about that. I had pretty severe flu-like chills the evening of, to the point where I was regretting my life choices for about ten minutes before I managed to fall asleep. I might even have avoided or at least been unconscious for the chills had I gone to bed when I actually started feeling tired like a smart person, or at least snagged an ibuprofen on my way to bed, but, well. The next day I felt similarly to how I felt after my second shot -- approximately how I feel when I have a reasonably bad cold. I felt more tired and less brainless than after the second shot -- it actually felt a bit less like feeling actively sick and more like my body had been through something that it now needed to rest from.

-I gave E Elatsoe to read and she really liked it! Score! The way Elatsoe codes as much younger than her canon age was a plus for E., and she also didn't mind (somewhat to my surprise) the interludes that didn't necessarily contribute to the through-line plot. (I also ended up moving Elatsoe much higher on my Lodestar voting list as a result -- to #2. I realized the only other books I would give E to read of this set were Raybearer, later, and Deadly Education, much later.)

-Everyone at church has been SUPER nice about my annoying and chivvying music emails. Music Guy (henceforth to be called Music Guy Baritone), after the third email where I was attempting to re-schedule his family (in this third case because I didn't understand his previous email, but we cleared that up) sent me a lovely note where he thanked me for organizing everything and how difficult he knew it was. Man, you know, my ward has tensions sometimes but overall does NOT do church politics well, everyone just is WAY too nice for that <3333333 (I also think our structure of callings, by which everyone plays musical chairs with different callings every few years, contributes -- Music Guy noted in his email that he'd had to be the music director before, so he knew how hard it can be, and it's much easier in general to be patient with someone else's failings when you've done that same job and know how tough it is!)

-Then there was the screwball comedy-like communications fail where I thought the kids' program had volunteered to sing without telling me, while they thought I was telling them to sing. It all worked itself out and now everyone thinks it's hilarious but wow self, next time up your communications game.

-That stake event where we did not have a choir to offer up? NO ONE had a choir, it turns out, for the obvious reasons. The only choir number was from a group from... the local Unitarian church?? (*) I find this utterly hilarious. (Also super weird! For another church it would not be weird, but my church is... usually very not good at playing well with others in our own space. I blame the stake music director for playing well with others!) Also there was the six-member group (the only actual group from my church more than three people) I managed to rustle up from my ward, where all were vaccinated and one member helpfully offered up the name "Safe Sextet." (...We did not go with that.) So Music Guy Baritone and Operatic Music Guy Tenor (who moved into the other ward, traitor!! Only I can't call him that because he very super nicely -- have I mentioned everyone is super nice -- helped out when we were going to be short a tenor) both did several numbers either solo or together, plus a couple of numbers with Smooth Music Guy Tenor (whose voice I am in love with and who ALSO moved into the other ward). But it all went super well and Awesome Organist Guy played the organ and everyone was so happy and, I mean, Music Guy Baritone and Operatic Music Guy Tenor and Smooth Music Guy Tenor are all completely excellent so no one was actually opposed to listening to a program that was all them.

-but I am very very happy to be past that particular event, I think actually last week was the big week rehearsal-wise and now we've rehearsed almost everything, yay, and HOW GLAD are all of the music people that we don't have a ward fireside/evening music program on top of all of this? SO GLAD

-how am I dealing with all of this? yes, by writing more (short) Yuletide fic and kind of feeling amused at the process by which I'm like "yeah, that prompt is great and I want to read it and definitely not able to write that myself" to "...but what if..." Also, betas are the best!

(*) Since I wrote this, I found out that it is the local Unity church, which is distinct from Unitarian, which I actually did not know before last week!

Things that have been happening at church(es):

-We walked into Lutheran church (late, as usual) and the handbells were playing "Hallelujah." That is, the Leonard Cohen song. ... What?! ...so apparently someone made up lyrics to it that were related to Jesus and crucifixion, that were printed in the bulletin, but... I just... what?? It was a really interesting arrangement, mind you. But... what?? I dunno, this just weirded me out. The Cohen Hallelujah is one of the most... secular (ETA: okay, fine, that's clearly not the right word)... songs I know, in the sense that it uses religious imagery to make its point about being areligious (unreligious?).... I don't like repurposing something so clearly counter to the point of its existing in the first place. (As opposed to repurposing tunes in general, which I would have to be a giant hypocrite to object to. Not that this has ever stopped me from objecting to things before! Okay, maybe it occasionally has.)

(I wonder who did the arrangement. I am betting that it was the church music guy. Because I also would think it was totally strange if they granted copyright permission to do this.)

-At LDS church: choir director, after rechecking and double rechecking that people were actually going to be around to sing in Sacrament meeting [service], realized right before church that he had another commitment and couldn't be around, and his wife subbed in for him at the last minute. I did not realize this (perhaps I should have), but her degree is in conducting. He is orders of magnitude better than our last conductor, but she is FABULOUS. I had not realized how much I missed singing under a REAL CONDUCTOR. I have resorted to CAPITAL LETTERS to show how much I enjoyed this.

(She's also gonna have to watch out. She's been flying under the radar -- if I didn't know how good she was, no one else did either, and now we all know :) )

-I got released from being chorister (after asking for same) after one month straight where E flipped out in Sacrament Meeting every week. (The flip-outs range from easily-contained-and-over-quickly to have-to-take-out-for-fifteen-minutes -- it could certainly be worse, but the thing is that they usually happen during the hymns! And I feel bad for having someone else deal with it.) I felt vaguely guilty, but less so when she had a fifteen-minute meltdown about five minutes after they announced my release.

-I may, however, pick up being unofficial choir pianist instead. Not quite sure what happened to the old one, but I've been doing it unofficially for, um, a month now. (The meltdowns don't usually happen during choir practice.)

-Taught a lesson on Why LDS Women Are Awesome, without anyone exploding, yay. I wasn't exactly expecting anyone to explode, but it's a bit of a minefield of a lesson. Why, for example, don't we get a lesson about Why LDS Men Are Awesome?

I am still alive, I promise! And the work crunch time is even over, but somehow my life still seems absurdly busy. I don't even know how all the other parents I know do this with multiple kids, I'm having enough trouble with one. (I have the bad feeling that it isn't actually possible: something gives.)

-invisible-ficathon has opened, so I keep trying to read things and comment, though erratically and randomly.

-Both church music programs I am doing are in times of flux, both of which are mostly vast improvements (K, this all happened pretty much right after I complained to you how much I was disliking both of them). My church got a new choir director who is one of two professional singers in the ward (the other is his wife), and we are doing Stainer's "God So Loved the World," which is... a piece that I actually enjoy, which is a huge change. I have been released from my calling as Music Coordinator (translation: do not have to deal with Christmas program drama directly anymore HOORAY). (I am now a Relief Society teacher, which I really enjoy, and may start posting about my lessons if anyone is interested. So far it's been The Plan of Salvation and Faith and Repentance.) Other church is undergoing reorganization in the fall and we may get to do polyphony again and sit in the choir loft, both of which would make me much happier.

-We are thinking about changing E's preschool for next year. I actually like many, many things about her current school, but even they agree that it might be just a little too out of her comfort zone and that she might like something a little more structured and academic. (Which is part of why I picked that preschool -- that it would be good for her to be exposed to a less structured, less academic preschool -- but oh well.)

-Her nanny/babysitter has gotten really sick really quickly; it is in fact quite frightening how quickly it all happened. One day she seemed totally fine, the next day she was assuredly not fine, and a couple of days later she was in the hospital. She is with her family, so that's good. I have no idea what the prognosis is like, but it sometimes sounds pretty bad. I just don't even know.

-To be selfish about the whole thing, I now have to figure out how to take care of E two more days a week. Fortunately her current preschool has been really accomodating (one of the things I really like about them).

-Apparently these days I'm dealing with stress by making a lot of chainmaille instead of doing the stuff I'm supposed to be doing.

-I'm reading Hild, which I love love love. More on that later, probably.

I spent 11.5 hours at the Catholic Church this week, despite not being Catholic. That's right. And yeah, I blew off both of the churches I actually belong to for Easter Sunday. I'm not in choir at the Lutheran one, and the Mormon choir did one song (this ward doesn't seem to really get into Easter, although my last one did much more), whereas Catholic choir was doing one Bach bit, a Pergolesi, a de Victoria, the Hallelujah Chorus, plus the entire Gabrielli Missa Brevis minus the Credo. So I felt like they needed me more.

( Various thoughts, mostly extremely shallow )

-Singing the Hallelujah Chorus just... never gets old. It's just the most awesome thing ever, especially with timpani and brass like we had it. MOST AWESOME THING EVER.

-No, not the most awesome thing. The very VERY best part was right after we sang it, when people clapped -- well, they generally do a polite one-second clap after we sing at services -- but then they kept on clapping. And kept clapping. It's been kind of hard for the choir lately -- due to the pastor's decisions lately, we've been a bit depressed and feeling like the church doesn't really appreciate us or the music we do -- and to have this validation otherwise was sort of staggering. I think all of us might have teared up a little. I sure did.

-I should mention here that at the end of the Holy Saturday service, the pastor singled out the choir and Choir Director for kudos from the congregation and specifically mentioned patience for putting up with him during the first part of his tenure. So I'm hoping that things are looking up in that direction? If only for Choir Director's sake. He's been having a really rough couple of months of it.

So (as people who have been around for a while know) I sing for this Catholic choir, despite not actually being Catholic or knowing anything about Catholicism -- but they sing polyphony and they pay me (a very small amount, but still), and I love it very much, when I'm not being frustrated by it.

The church recently got a new pastor, who has very different ideas on the role of the choir than the choir director does. ( Accessibility of music vs. traditional liturgy; the unintentional amusement of singing at the front of the church; and my not flirting with the officiating priest, really! )

So to make up for the evening-Christmas-program DRAMA, the ward (congregation) choir has been spontaneously organizing sectionals. Spontaneously! I didn't even know about it until I sort of fell into one of the sectionals (through yet another music thing I was doing). There were ten people at the tenor sectional, y'all, which is basically everyone in the Christmas tenor section (by which I mean, Christmas gets people in choir who might not ordinarily come).

At least three other people, and counting, have told me they are coming to the much-more-hastily-organized alto sectional (I, uh, was shamed into emailing all the altos) on Saturday morning. Whcih is pretty much the entire alto section that doesn't have problems like, for example, being so physically unwell that they shouldn't be singing but do anyway, or looking after multiple sick kids.

I have neeeeever ever ever been in a choir (of more than five people) that spontaneously organized EXTRA REHEARSALS. This totally makes up for everything else. (Well, so far. Talk to me on the 24th and we will see whether I have survived that long. I can already tell my CAPS LOCK levels are getting dangerously high these days.)