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: )

I got released Sunday from my church calling as music coordinator, which I've been doing for four years almost exactly. (I was called a little before Christmas 2018, when my previous ward was split and the half of the ward I was in got combined with our current ward.) I'm having a ton of mixed feelings about this which I am going to inflict on you! instead of doing all the stuff I'm actually supposed to be doing

( Cut for lengthy rambling. )

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 I have done this week, a partial list:
-prepped a zoom lesson for Relief Society (the women's organization), the prep of which took rather less time than the scripture-based class I used to teach, because I had to do research for that one, but prep for RS classes mostly consists of coming up with meaty questions that everyone else can chew on and discuss
-actually gave the zoom lesson, which went pretty well except that our wireless went out ten minutes beforehand, which meant I did the entire thing from my phone, and thank goodness I didn't also have to deal with letting people in the room and so on (another woman did that)
-signed A. up for outside masked summer camp
-made an Easter music video with the kids, which took about seven takes
-UPLOADED the music video with the kids, which took longer than making it
-filled easter eggs with nice notes to the kids about things I liked about them, to be hidden by D
-wrote at least some DW comments
-one load of laundry

Things I have not done:
-figured out church music for April, omg, I need to do this TOMORROW
-sign A. up for the one camp that opened registration on Friday, which means all the spots are probably taken now
-write about Orieux's Voltaire bio for either salon or a DW post
-the other two loads of laundry that need to be done

-State of Christmas music: who even knows. I feel like as it has turned out there are a lot of moving parts that I'm unconvinced will all come together, but if it does, I think I have an outdoor instrumental program that lets people have a bit of some reasonably competent Christmas music while doing our best not to put anyone at risk? If our family or the other musical family in the ward turns out to have to quarantine during that time, maybe I don't have a program? As for the video part, I have pretty much given up on that, I have sent a lot of harassing emails and now it's up to them, I'll make a little video with the kids and everyone else can just make a little video or not, and anyone who does will post them to the ward Facebook page. What we really needed was someone who would string all the videos together so we could have a group watching experience, and no one including me was willing to do that. (This is also So Not My Job. This is the job I said no to last year when it was in person and *less* work.) But, like. What are they going to do, fire me? (...which... I would super not mind, except that it would probably mean being slotted into another calling that required more work or at least more work I was unsuited for. :) )

-State of Yuletide: ahahaha. I laugh. Honestly it is overall pretty low stress because this year I am writing short fun things and not trying to figure out ambitious or long ideas. But now I have somehow been sucked into helping out with a rather ambitious idea, so I am actually spending quite a bit more time than I'd anticipated on that. On the other hand, it is not my ambitious idea, so I don't actually have to be stressed about it. :) I'm really invested now, but it's great for me because I can do mostly the fun parts, lol.

-bonus bullet point: A chance remark online got me googling reusable menstrual pads, omg I was skeptical at first but I love these things so much, the best thing I've bought all year. I am using primarily ones from Tree Hugger Cloth Pads from Canada which, have I mentioned, are so great. I'll do a proper better review of them later... probably in January. But I have now finished my first month of using solely cloth pads and I am so happy.

In November, I fell headfirst into falling desperately in love with the Book of Mormon musical.

I really wasn't expecting it to work in quite that way? I hadn't even ever watched it, although I've listened to the cast recording about a billion times, and am kind of desperately in love with parts of that, and I'd watched clips on YouTube. ( Cut for length. Lots of discussion of religion, at least tangentially. )

Well. Sunday was interesting. Not in a bad way, indeed in what will ultimately, I think, be a good and happy way, but in an unexpectedly bittersweet and emotional way.

( Church stuff. )

I subbed in and taught the Sunbeams (3-and-4-year-olds) last Sunday (including E). This is the first Sunday School class, the one they go into right after nursery. At this age they're expected to learn to sit in chairs, listen to a lesson, answer questions posed to them by a teacher (I'm not talking calculus here, questions on the order of "Do you have brothers and sisters?") and be involved in group participation in general.

...I think my church is wildly overoptimistic. Or, okay, not wildly: four of the five kids in my class were okay with most of this. It... only takes one kid who doesn't buy into any of it to wreck the entire thing. (There's always the sigh of relief of This Time Not My Kid.) Fortunately, there was another adult in the class (she was not supposed to be there, but she got home early from vacation) to help deal, and to take the kids when others of them had to go to the bathroom, and help with supervising the washing of hands before snack. I mean, preschool teachers must deal with this all the time! The teacher who just got released dealt with them every week! (After this week, I have revised my opinion of her, by the way, from Excellent Sunbeam Teacher We Will All Sorely Miss to Possibly a Goddess in Disguise.) I myself have not acquired the essential multi-kid classroom coping skills.

Two of the kids answered the questions of "How many brothers do you have? How many sisters?" claiming way more siblings than they in fact possessed. A third kid answered almost every question with "ORCS!" sometimes adding "Azog!"

They did all (even orc-child) really enjoy, if not the actual story of Moses and Miriam, the accompanying picture (a tip I'd gotten from Previous Sunbeam Teacher), looking for the baby in the bulrushes (actual quote from my lesson: "No, it is not generally okay to put your baby brother in a basket and put the basket in the river.") and looking for Miriam hiding off to the side. The concentration-style game I tried to play with them started well but turned out as a failure when the fifth child decided he wanted to turn over alllll the cards to find his match.

If they come out of this recognizing the name "Moses" (which none of them did at the beginning), I'll count the lesson a success.

Okay, I have something to confess, which is that I enjoy talking about music drama. Because it is dramatic! (And because my life doesn't have that much of interpersonal drama otherwise, so I have to import it. Which I am perfectly fine with! I am not into interpersonal drama!)

But I am afraid that I'm leaving you guys with a terribly inaccurate portrayal of my ward, which basically had maybe three people generating all the drama, and honestly all three of those people are also really super nice as well, just with slightly different ideas. So let me tell you about all the nice things/people that happened to me this week alone, in planning this fireside:

1. The friend that I complained to about not having enough musical numbers for the fireside, who despite being super busy with family and work (he's a caterer, so this is his busy season) and family visiting, organized a quartet with another family by ONE HOUR LATER and all four of them have learned a completely new song for it

2. The woman who was at the root of much of the drama last year came to me and said that she wanted things to be good between us and that she was trying to work on not wanting to be in control of everything, and my gosh, this kind of thing never happens except in movies, you really have to be a big person to back out of a situation like that, I hope that I can be that gracious when I'm the one who needs to back out

3. The pianist with three kids, one of whom has ASD, who has cheerfully accepted everything I have piled on her (and I have piled a LOT on her)

4. The corporate chief administrative officer who has also cheerfully accepted all the piano assignments I have thrown at him, and I am pretty sure took off work for at least one rehearsal

5. The mom who is visiting our ward for only six months but nevertheless has cheerfully volunteered for everything, including running the Christmas party (a separate event in which I was not involved that happened last week, but let me assure you it was a LOT of work) and learning a random new song for the fireside, all this while having two kids under the age of 5 and being hugely pregnant with a third

6. The corporate CEO who when I asked him to perform at the fireside last week immediately was jazzed about singing a song with his kids

7. The mom who has four kids, the youngest being 1, and has a sister visiting, and who immediately accepted planning a trio and who also took dinner to the family that just had twins last night

8. The grandmother with the gorgeous voice whom I saw at rehearsal at 8:45pm one evening for one fireside number and whom I saw again the next morning at another rehearsal, for a different song, at 9am

9. The other people -- I have not talked about everyone in this post by a long shot -- who have been nothing but helpful and enthusiastic and interested and willing to pour their time and energy into making this thing happen

10. And, I mean, this is just one event I'm involved in, you know? There was also the Christmas party I referred to earlier, and the women's party, and the church service tomorrow, and all the other things that happen during the year, and all the music things, for that matter, and all the other families that need dinner taken to them or help with moving or emotional support or what have you. And there are always people willing to help, indeed, enthusiastic about helping. They humble me every time I think about them.

MY WARD, you guys. THEY ARE THE BEST.