In which Saisquoi decides maturity is highly overrated

baby things
I've spent my Sunday doing very mature, adult things. I went to church this morning for Palm Sunday. I finally got the guest list for Easter dinner--we'll be having 17 or 18 guests for dinner. So The Beloved and I started to clean in earnest. Hopefully the house won't be appalling next week--I have high hopes, particularly if Resident Sibling pulls her weight. That, of course, is not a certainty, but I choose not to worry...yet.

So we cleaned. And I did laundry. Lots of laundry. And we cleaned some more. Wow. What a way to spend a Sunday.

Saturday was WAY preferable. My camera arrived, so here are some glimpses of The Beloved and I out on the town.

Here we are at The Home Depot. Our toilet seat broke. Naturally, the toilet in our house is gray. Behold the wall of toilet seats:


None are gray. We found we could special order a gray one if we really wanted, but that just seemed...well...silly. Particularly since we really didn't want to wait for a toilet seat to arrive. After much deliberation, we decided on an oak one. Nothing was going to match; oak seemed the most reasonable choice.

When we finished running errands, we decided to take advantage of the absolutely glorious day.

We went to the beach. As you can tell, we were the coolest kids there. From whence comes the burning desire to fly a kite? Who knows. But I had it. And The Beloved, being wonderful, agreed to humor me. In spite of the fact that neither of us have flown a kite in years, we didn't do half-bad if I do say so myself. It took off with ease and sailed like nobody's business.

Man, it was great. If you haven't flown a kite recently, I highly recommend it. You should be able to find one at a high-quality toy store, and while some are expensive, ours was under $20. Hours of fun.

Check out The Beloved in action:

He claims it was "OK," but I think he actually had fun. In fact, I think he may come out and do it again!

We had so much fun outside, that knitting "suffered." I'm plugging along with the baby cardi and it will be done eventually. Probably next week, particularly since I'm taking some time off. I'm also working on a "mystery project." My mother's birthday is coming up and so I'm trying to figure something out for that--something tells me the baby cardi isn't for her.

Tomorrow, I'll play with the camera some more, show you the progress on the baby cardi and give you a little yarn porn--the yarn for my cardigan arrived yesterday, and I'm considering just keeping it as is and carrying skeins around to pat during the day. The yarn is soooooo soft. But now I'm getting sleepy and have to get one more load of laundry in before calling it a day. I gotta tell you--the kite-flying was way more fun than the housework.

We're All Going To Hell

church
On Thursday nights I have church choir rehearsal from 7:00-8:00, or whenever we finish up. Last night we ran late due to unbearable silliness.

The choir is small on its best days--last night there were three of us there: the director (who also happens to be my mother); one of the altos; and me. This, naturally, provided the perfect recipe for trouble.

We are singing a lot of spirituals, both as anthems and as congregational hymn, during Lent and Holy Week this year. However, we are a very white choir. Very. White. So, my poor mother tries to find ways of making us sound a little less so. Sing like an opera singer. Do this. Try that. And at times like this, I'm always reminded of my college Concert Choir Director, Dr. Howard. I did my undergraduate work at UNH, and our choir there was also very white. Dr. Howard, however, was not. And he would tell us, particularly when we were working on spirituals, that although we were all his little white children, he would make it so no one would know that by listening to us. Well, K.E., the intrepid alto who made it to rehearsal last night, also sang for Dr. Howard (her experience was during an NH All-State festival). She told a story about a group of white high school-aged kids from NH singing a jazz mass and Dr. Howard trying to coax a less-white sound from the ensemble. After trying a number of things, he tells them: "Close your eyes. Imagine you are in New York City and you're in a part of town where there are hookers walkin' the streets. And you see this woman in a red dress cut down to here (points at midsection) and up to here (points to hip). Now I want you to sound like that dress looks."

Naturally, this works. It works as well, if not better, than Mom telling us to imagine we're opera singers. However, it leads to a number of red dress comments throughout the rest of the evening. I said I'd wear mine to church on Sunday (I think it's even "cut down to there"), since we're singing I Want Jesus to Walk With Me.

Then we pull out Easter music. We'll be singing Wade in the Water during the Baptism at the Easter Vigil. Everything goes fine until we get to the second verse:

See that band all dressed in red.
God's a-gonna trouble the water.
Looks like the band that Moses led.
God's a-gonna trouble the water.

Needless to say, we could not make it through verse two of this particular spiritual. All we could picture was Moses with a band of hookers wearing red dresses cut down to there and up to here. I'm wondering how we're going to make it through the hymn at the Easter Vigil. Fortunately, we have several weeks to build up our resolve and/or pray for strength. After all, the responses during the baptismal covenant are "I will, with God's help."

In the meantime, Mom has told me to save the red dress for Pentecost.

Like us on Facebook

Flickr Images