7-Quick Takes

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1.  Sorry for the week-long blog break.  It wasn’t something that I intended to do – it just naturally occurred!  Every time I sat down to blog something else popped up that was more important and pressing.  Such is life sometimes.

2.  With the change of the liturgical season usually comes a change in the mass parts at mass (dropping the Gloria and then changing the Sanctus, memorial acclamation, Agnus Dei etc.) In my parish there is a big push to get back to chant and Latin so I sort of thought that perhaps I would voluntarily limit my playing during Lent.

3.  Which is a good thing apparently because a day or two before Ash Wednesday I got a call from one of the musical directors that my services would not be required during Lent – at all.  I could sit this one out. My first reaction was YESS!!!!  I could go to any mass I wanted to, at any church I wanted to and I could have my Sunday’s completely free to do whatever I wanted to do!!! and much of it without kids because my older ones sing in the choir and do the 9 a.m. mass and Mr. Pete and the younger kids do Sunday School and then the 11 a.m. mass.  I was seriously liking this!

But then it kind of sunk in – I was being asked NOT to play.  Decades of training and performance experience and they don’t. want. it.   I got a sensation similar to when the transcription company I worked for lowered my base pay.  

Not a good feeling.

3.  To make up for it though I took a gig playing for an Irish Dance group next weekend. It will be me with three female voices and a guitar.  However, since the three voices are still singing for church during Lent,  our practices are between masses (there go my free Sundays) and Wednesday nights (before what would have been my regular rehearsals.)  And who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor!?

4.  I am in charge of our homeschool group. Our group had been in a bit of trouble and the leadership had sort of fizzled out. So about a year ago I came in with a bloodless coup and took over the leadership for our group.  Since then it has been a lot like pushing an elephant up a hill – the older moms who have been doing this a long time don’t want to talk about homeschooling any more and the younger moms new to homeschooling are pretty focused on just educating their children! It’s been a challenge to figure out the needs of both sides.  But delightfully it came together on Tuesday night when we had our third meeting of the year and it was well attended with plenty of good discussions.  I was happy about that.

The problem is that our Yahoo group is getting over run with political posts and if we’re not careful there could be some real drama that will snuff out the life of this group that I at least have stable on life support.  So I did the only reasonable thing – put the group on moderation.  We’ll see how it works out.

5.  Last Saturday I gave my talk to the confirmation girls – come to think of it, maybe that was the event that sucked out my will to blog last week. It is quite a difficult thing to speak to a group of 8th grade girls, particularly about sexuality and purity.  You can tell that some of the girls in the group are ready for that talk ( and perhaps are getting the information a tad late!) while another part of the group is still playing with dolls, with a big hunk in the middle so tired from staying up late the night before to get much out of the talk.  There was a girl in the front row, right in front of me who fell  asleep – and this was when I was talking about alcohol, drugs and sex – a topic that usually keeps some interest.  I dunno – I didn’t feel as if I had been particularly helpful with that talk this year. I guess we’ll see.

6.  Last month one of my good friends had this great idea for celebrating his mother’s 93rd birthday! He and his sister sent out requests to all of their family and friends asking them to send her a birthday card! The cards flooded in!  Every walk to the mail box brought more surprises, good wishes and lots of cards.  In the end she got over 100 of them! and I am so honored that we got to participate!

7.   Sadly Mrs. J passed away unexpectedly this week. But to the end she was independent and living in her own home – and because of the great card caper – she knew that she was much loved.