Pi Girl

And I mean that quite literally. The Crystal Chords had a retreat the last 2 days and we got to work with 2 fabulous coaches, Jeanne and Larry. 2 days of singing with a few breaks here and there can leave one very tired and drained. And without much voice.

Kind of reminds of back in the day when I used to do All-Counties and Area-AllStates. Only this was way better. Mostly because I know these women and we used this opportunity to bond with each other and there wasn’t all that competition going on.

So, there was fun, hard work and a lot of singing. All would make for a good retreat, but what upped the coolness factor was that every single person in the chorus worked their butt off. There was no slacking, no complaining; just complete listening, absorbing and performing.

The ideas we got for our contest package were so cool, I really hope we can pull it off. International will be here soon(!) so we need to keep the momentum going.

My only “aw, darn” moment was that I didn’t get to do any one-on-one coaching with Larry. He videotaped the chorus and worked with people individually to show them their faces and body movements and coached them on how to improve. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get to all 32 of us so I didn’t get to work with him. Aw, darn.

After the retreat finished, Affinity got an hour of Jeanne and Larry’s time to listen to us and give us some suggestions. Which was good for us, even though we were all so tired by that point. Bonus, I got the über-awesome opportunity to sing a song with Jeanne and then a tag with Larry. That high kept me awake the whole way home … which was good, ’cause I was driving.

You may recall my story about meeting my crazy neighbor when I first moved into the house. Well, today I finally met the wife.

Please note that I met her today for the first time.

Anyway, a little background. Jason noted to me last week that there was a nasty 3-car pile-up on one of the bridges that was caused by some old guy. When he showed me the picture in the paper, sure enough, there was our 80-year-old crazy neighbor and his van watching his wife taken away in an ambulance. He walked away just fine, but his wife was pretty banged up.

As I discovered today. When I arrived home after work, I heard someone calling my name while I walked up to my door. I turned around to see a woman with bruises all over her face and her arm in a sling.

“My husband got to meet you but I haven’t yet. As you can see, I’ve been in a car accident.”

At this point, I was impressed she knew my name and was walking so I said, “yes, I read about it in the paper. I’m glad to see you are well and walking around.”

This is where she went into a long account of the accident and how many times she hit the dashboard and pointed out all her bruises and her stitches.

And I mean, all of her bruises. Next thing I know, the woman reaches down and lifts up her shirt to her chin to show me all her bruises. We are in the middle of the street and this woman who I just met 2 minutes ago has now flashed me. Yes, she was wearing a bra.

The rest of the conversation was a blur. I think I may have offered to bring Jason over to see them sometime, I know I started willing Kelsey to jump back up in the door so I had an out.

At some point, she got around to complaining about one of the neighbor’s loud music and that’s when she told me she had already called the police on them and was making her rounds to the other neighbors so they would call and complain too. I wonder if she’ll show them all her bruises too. Or maybe they all saw it out their windows.

I know, I go on and on about how I don’t like my cat and always favor the dog. (Jason, this is why I shouldn’t have kids!) I do like the cat, but her kitten antics are often way too much for me to handle. She wants to play and be pet and get attention all the time. She is very affectionate, but then will turn around and hiss at you and bite your hand. Although I’m starting to think I could charge admission for anyone who wants to see the amazing cat who somersaults.

She’s an indoor cat. I’ve never lived in a house where a cat went outside unless the cat was determined or was wearing a leash. So my cat is declawed and I work to keep her inside, especially when I hear the cat fights on my street at night.
Jason has lost her a few times. Our screen door doesn’t automatically close, which he forgets and by the time he realizes what’s going on, the cat’s already gone outside. Thank God she doesn’t go far, but it still freaks me out.

So, last night there was a really bad thunderstorm. It woke me up from my Nyquil-induced sleep and I hid between Jason and the dog while the storm raged on (I hate thunderstorms).

This morning, my neighbor knocked on my door to bring over a screen that had fallen from the 2nd story into her yard. The screen was fine, despite having fallen on a piece of driftwood. So I brought the screen in and went to close the window.

And that’s when I realized - I hadn’t seen the cat all morning. She didn’t wake me up with her rubbing her head in my hand. She didn’t try to jump on the dog’s back when he raced downstairs. She didn’t try to get out the door when I let the dog out!

I looked out the window - no cat bodies lay on the ground. I ran all around the house, calling for her (yes, the cat comes when you call her). I went outside and looked for her but I didn’t see her. I went back inside and began my panic attack. At this point Jason had woken up and when I told him what happened, his concern was “is the screen ok?”

Then I heard her meow. She has a distinct meow when she is alone and seems to be looking for someone - you can hear it if she’s downstairs and we’re all upstairs or when I take the dog out and she’s behind the door. It was definitely coming from outside. I ran outside, still didn’t see her so I went back in. But then, she meowed again with her more normal “hello” meow and I looked out and she came trotting up the front steps.

She was mostly dry and seemed to suffer no injuries. Just in case, I gave her a good inspection and held her for a while. She’s a little dirty, but not too bad. And she’s back to her morning routine of standing guard in the middle of the hallway so she can observe my activities between the various rooms.

I’ve calmed down, but I still wonder how she got out of that fall. She could have landed on the neighbor’s fence or the driftwood. Or maybe she landed on the trampoline. If she landed on the ground, it would have taken some serious aerobatic skill to maneuver the obstacles in the way. But then, she is a cat.

If you feel like reading an in-depth analysis of how my crazy self functions, my personality twin, Marsha, posted the results of her . Like her, I am INTJ, although I would like to think that my F is very developed too.

If you want to check out your results, you can take the test for free here and see the same in-depth analysis here. Happy personality testing!

I’m attending a wedding tomorrow for a friend from church. I am not really in the wedding, but she asked me to be a chalice bearer for communion (that means I give people the wine). That also means I got to attend the rehearsal dinner tonight.

Which gave me a really unique perspective on things. For one thing, before my own wedding 11 months ago, I had never been in a wedding. So I went into the whole thing pretty blind, especially on the whole rehearsal dinner part. It didn’t help that my stress level was through the roof and I was also playing hostess to party members who I hadn’t seen in a while or hadn’t met at all and most of them were new to the church, etc. You get the picture.

This time, I got to sit back, watch the proceedings and observe. Of course, I made several comparisons to my own rehearsal last year but for the most part, I was struck at how familiar it all was. Like we did it right or something. Not that I really needed validation on whether my own rehearsal (which isn’t even the wedding!) went well, but just that feeling of “ok, everyone goes through this.”

The bride was stressed, the maid of honor was late and lost, people were meeting each other for the first time, several of them had to be shown the restrooms at the church. And while I was there for a small bit part, I started to feel more like a bridal mentor.

I was able to fill the roles for those little tiny things you just don’t think about until the rehearsal. Like, who will hold the doors open? (Jason’s good for that.) So many little kids in the party - can we get them some toys to distract them? (of course, we have 2 toy baskets in the back of the church.)

The bride said to me several times, “you’ve been through this before. You know what it’s like.” I think she needed her own vaildation. Which is weird because just about everyone in her party was married. But they’ve all been married for several years - at least long enough to have walking, talking kids. Maybe they forgot how stressful a wedding is, or the little things that can only come up last minute.

So I just gave her the advice that was so wisely passed on to me. Chill out. Relax and get plenty of sleep. There’s nothing to be done between now and tomorrow morning. She asked how is that even possible. I told her I was given a sleeping pill.

Ok, so the kids have been back to school for a week now. Jim even started school several weeks ago at OCC. (Go Jim! I’m so proud of you!)

Back to school time used to be one of my favorite times of the year. I loved going to school as a kid, and looked forward to buying all the latest and greatest in school supplies and organizing all my stuff by subject and figuring out how I was going to decorate the locker. When I was really young, I also looked forward to the homework, but that feeling subsided alot as I grew older. I think I really just liked the thought of learning and challenging myself to do better. That was especially true in college, where all of my classes were exactly what I wanted and I was excited about each class.

Ah, back to school. Fond memories. Now that I’m all old, I kind of missed out on the whole back to school thing and forgot it was back. That probably comes from not being in school anymore and not working in a school-related industry.

So, I only know it’s time for back to school because youth group is finally starting up again. After a nice, restful summer, it’s back to thinking up plans and activities for my kids. To remind the kids (and me) that it’s youth group time again, I went to Grace Church yesterday for services.

It was good to see them, I missed my kids this summer. They’re all excited about this year too. Well, mostly they’re just excited about going to New Beginnings later this month. I’m bummed I can’t go with them this time, but I’m glad they’re excited to go and will be even happier when I hear that they all had a fabulous time without me there.

In a few months, I’ll probably be back to “what was I thinking, taking on a youth group with my busy schedule?” But tonight, I’m all about spending time with the kids, finding out how their summers went and how school is starting now. We’ll have the usual games we simply have to play and I’ll hear all about which boys are cute and which ones are just annoying.

And when that time comes in a few months when I think “what was I thinking?”, I’ll just remind myself that I love my kids too much and want them to have a safe place to come to where they can be themselves, have fun and know that God loves them without judgement.

Oh, I do love back to school time!

If there is one person who totally needs a blog, it’s Janice. If you are lucky enough to be on her email list to get the Costa Rica updates and the crazy goings-on in Tallahassee, then you know she tells the best stories and has the best insight into situations. If you don’t know her, I highly encourage you to check Janice out.

She wanted me to wait before linking to her, but she and her friend Marsha went to see the Tallahassee Boys Choir the other night and enjoyed the concert very much. Sounds like the Tally Boys Choir is almost as good as Affinity.

While I’m plugging blogs, I’m very addicted to my bro-in-law, Chris’s blog. We all miss him and pray every day for his safe return from Kuwait. Which may explain the addiction - he could write an entry that just says “boo” and we’d all be happy to know that if he’s blogging, he’s doing just fine and dandy.