So have I mentioned that I joined a choir?

I haven't been in a choir since I was 22 years old which means that my voice sounds truly horrible and feels awkward and also that I write things in my music like "SLOW" instead of "RIT".  I have completely forgotten everything I knew about music and when I'm trying to figure out the note that the basses are signing I find myself thinking back to "Good Boys Do Fine Always" and then counting up or down from the note I can identify.  It is HORRIFYING.  

But also, as of my fifth rehearsal last night, it is fun.  So I shall continue to make an ass of myself in the name of fun and a bit of spiritual fulfillment (these moments are few and far between as we are still learning notes and the choir has few moments of sounding nice).  

My choir is full of Brits as one would expect.  That is a country of choristers if ever there was one.  And yet I manage to seem like the biggest choir geek of all of them.  The root of my Muscat Singers geekdom occurred on the third rehearsal, when we were given one of my favorite John Rutter pieces to sing and I started gabbing on about having gone to see him two years in a row, blah blah.  Then, I told the woman standing beside me who has a middle school aged daughter that there is nothing cool at all about choir and so its probably best to get your kids involved in choir sooner rather than later.  (Though, I did try smoking a cigarette on choir tour in London when I was 16.  It made me SO ILL.)

Last night I made a friend at choir (the breaks have been a bit lonely until this most recent rehearsal).  She's mostly my friend because we were standing next to each other and she made the same mistake three times in a row and so we laughed.  (Definitely a 'laughing with' situation rather than a 'laughing at' situation.)  She had glitter eye make up on and referred to her boyfriend as her partner. (Have I mentioned how every person on that island (a big one, but still) calls their significant other - no matter if they are married - their 'partner'? It's accurate but still somehow confusing.)  Anyway, she's an English teacher and she might leave Muscat after this academic year anyway, and that, my friends, is why the expat life is tough.  (Have I mentioned that Leigh is leaving over the summer?  And also Kathy, probably?)

I think choir felt especially therapeutic last night because over the weekend, the father of a family at school passed away (I have heard from a sudden heart attack).  His middle daughter was in Lizzie's class, his eldest is in Tommy's grade and he also had a toddler.  The news has made me feel sick (but not too sick to devour the oatmeal chocolate chip cookies I stupidly made on Saturday) and has also had the very unexpected consequence of causing me to be meaner than normal to my own (very nice) husband.  Luckily, he has been accepting my apologies and I have been mature enough to understand that I am at fault.  (The worst part of being married to a lawyer, I think, is the tendency a lawyer has to focus on the best arguments available to them, rather than admitting culpability.)  

Remember in Garden State, when Natalie Portman's character talks about being "in it"?  That really resonated with me (as did most of Natalie Portman's character, other than the seizures) and so I shall conclude this post by explaining that I am "in it" and planning to come out soon.  I have lots of things to distract me, not the least of which is Lizzie's declaration that she wants to be a bunny, NOT a river dolphin (but she IS being a river dolphin as we had to empty her college fund to pay for that costume) and the fact that I have 30 cocktail sausages to cut into fingers for Lizzie's Halloween party.  (I went to four stores and read the ingredients of every package of hot dogs in Muscat and finally threw these into my cart; I am so grossed out but this is my assignment and I want an A.)

Photos in the next post -- more of the Andersons' visit!

And, to leave you with some humor, this is what my boy said to me yesterday:

"If you were a dinosaur, what place would you eat first? I'd eat Dunkin Donuts."  (To which I replied, "Have you ever been to Dunkin Donuts??")