This is the ONLY day all week long (including yesterday) that I don’t have a major rehearsal with the Arrowhead Chorale. We are joining the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra Chorus and the orchestra itself, joined by a few people from the Minnesota Opera to sing Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. I hadn’t heard the piece before we began rehearsing. It’s crazy hard. Some critics consider it the hardest piece of choral music in existence. To be honest, it is never going to be my favorite piece of music ever, but the music has grown on me tremendously, and there are bits of it that I really like singing at the stage. Perhaps most important of all, the piece has really stretched me musically and I’ve learned and grown a lot from participating.
The week before a chorale concert there are always random phrases in foreign languages constantly running through my head. This week there are snatches of Latin splurting out my mouth in rhythm and sometimes on pitch.
Yesterday was Mothers Day. It was a very busy day and we didn’t squeeze in any really exciting activities, but that was just fine with me. I did get to take a monstrously long nap, which was glorious. I also got to eat my lunch all by myself on the couch. That’s actually a big deal, because I LOVE eating by myself on the couch. I actually really dislike sitting down at the table with my family, but I try to do that most of the time because it’s what I’m supposed to be doing. Sometimes I try to sneak off with my plate to the kitchen and eat standing in a corner, but my husband always calls me on it and back to the table I must go. I was elated when he handed me a plate of lunch on the couch and everyone else ate at the table.
For mothers day I received an amazing collection of homemade gifts and two pairs of wonderful wool socks. It was great.
After my chorale rehearsal I drove home, but my husband didn’t let me out of the car (I suspect that he might have been behind on getting everyone to bed, and he knows that frustrates me). Instead, he sent me off to the grocery store by myself. We didn’t need groceries, really, but I went to my favorite grocery store, which is a dangerous place when you are hungry, and I bought some things for my supper. Since it was Mother’s Day I splurged: cashews, a fruit smoothie, fresh tortillas, organic 2% milk (sooooooooooo good!) and a container of rice pudding. I came home and crafted a delicious meal with some leftovers in the fridge.
About a month ago I began redoing my photography website to an HTML site that can be viewed on iPads and phones as well as computers. As expected, it was a lengthy process, but I’m really happy with the results viewed on a computer. It seems to squish down weird on an ipad, so I’m still tweaking things, but you can view it at rzanaphotography.com. Feel free to let me know what your thoughts are or if you see something that needs to be changed. I’ve looked at it so much I can’t think straight anymore.
Mr. Trouble on Feet has discovered his sneaky genes. Last week he managed to empty two bottles of facial sunscreen moisturizer down the drain of the bathroomsink and cake all the family toothbrushes with a thick layer of soap while I thought he was napping.
AWANA is now over for the year, but before it ended the big kid lets headed to the “AWANA store” at church to spend their AWANA bucks earned for learning verses and other feats of excellence on Wednesday night. When we picked them up all three were elated with their purchases. Mr. Sneaky Pants scored a purple vampire teeth insert. “Can you believe this was only on the five dollar table?” he asked me incredulously, his speech slurred by all of the purple plastic in his mouth. YaYa got something she was happy with (I can’t remember what anymore) and then happily gave away the rest of her bucks to someone who didn’t have very many. She’s my girl with the giving heart. The Banana spent all of her AWANA bucks (and she had quite a lot) on an amazing collection of candy, half of which she’d already eaten before we picked her up because she was afraid we’d throw the rest in the garbage. (We have, I will admit, a bit of a track record with candy disposal around here).
The other day YaYa and I were discussing crushes and how people in middle school often have crushes on other people. We were talking about crushes that her friends have. The Banana was listening in and asked if I ever had any crushes on boys, so I told my girls about some of the boys I had crushes on at one time or another. Later that evening The Banana asked Dr. Peds if he’d ever had any crushes, and he started describing his first crush on a girl. “WAIT!” The Banana yelled, aghast. “You had crushes on GIRLS!!!!!” (Apparently she thought you could only have crushes on boys?) I laughed so hard!
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