Menage à Trois Bingo

One week to concert, and Tammie's got a nasty cough/cold and my throat is scratchy. Yikes!

Still have four songs I'm not confident on the memorization (or in one case, even the notes, bah I hate when our part is 90% doos and oohs, I have a terrible time remembering which ones and how many and what notes they go on). Time for much cramming.

And somewhere in there I've got to make time to edit my podfic polygons assignment.

And tidy the house because my parents are coming for the show. They're not staying with us, and may not even visit the house because of how the schedule works out, but...

Luckily, tomorrow is a work holiday.

It's 2019, and as usual, I'm going to attempt to post more often. (Probably also as usual, I will fail. but I'll try.)

I haven't written anything not work-related in years, and yet I was rather unexpectedly hit by a story idea while not-sleeping last night, and I've actually put a few hundred words of it down. Watch this space. It's very porny (porn with feelings but basically no plot), very poly, and very bi. Also, not surprisingly, very HP-verse.

2018 was a year. The world continued to suck as fascism breaks out all over, but my life was mostly decent.

I got married, and exactly nothing changed in my daily life except that every once in a while Tammie and I make schmoopy "we got married" faces at each other, and that I added her to my health savings account card.

Rosa started college, to mixed success. I haven't seen her first semester grades yet but I am pretty sure from things she's said that she did relatively badly in a couple classes and relatively well in the others. She's living in the dorm on weekdays and coming home every weekend, not ideal, but better than living at home in the 'steps to independent adulthood' category. She still persists in refusing to learn to drive.

Chris had semi-emergency gall bladder removal.

I found out I have cataracts and will be having cataract removal surgery in the next few weeks. I am honestly terrified--I have a phobia of any kind of eye injury or even portrayal of such--but my vision is really deteriorating rapidly.

I made some stuff. Over 12 hours of podfic (check out semperfiona on AO3), some incomplete knitted things that I can't even locate right now, and just this month a quilt top of my own design. I've never made a quilt of any kind before, but as usual I dive in at the deep end and design one from scratch.

Charis still rocks, we got some new members this last concert cycle that have really gotten into the community-building aspect and have been inviting everybody to everything. I joined the governance committee and get to nitpick grammar and inclusivity in the bylaws to my heart's content and then some.

The composer from whom CHARIS commissioned a piece for our 25th anniversary has made a music video of our performance. I'm the one who says "Every wrinkle, every fold: after me they broke the mold" late in the piece.



And on Saturday, I sang backup on seven country covers for a friend of mine at St Charles PRIDE. Her mom made a facebook live video which you can view here. I'm the one on the far left.

Yesterday was the fullest busiest day I have had in ... probably ever. I mean, I sang a Black Sabbath song to Ozzy motherfucking Osborne, and that was only the SECOND most important and exciting thing I did yesterday, because I also got MARRIED!

Obviously, I've got some 'splainin to do.

I posted here almost a month ago that Tammie and I had gotten a marriage license. We had not yet set a date or made plans, so over the course of the next couple of weeks we figured that all out, made a reservation for a small private room at a local restaurant and invited our selected witnesses, for 4 o'clock on March 10th.

A little more than a week ago, the president of Charis told us we had been invited to appear on an upcoming episode of Ozzy and Jack's World Detour, to be taped...at noon on March 10th. My first thought was that no way would I be able to do it, but after talking to Tammie and Chris we decided I could make it work.

So I got up early yesterday morning, did my hair and makeup, and went to the nail salon for a manicure. Then I bought breakfast for my family, ran home and ate it with them, and took off for the tv taping, which was held in the church where we normally rehearse.

They rented us choir robes. I'd never worn a choir robe in my life, despite having sung in church choirs in my youth: it just wasn't a thing that our church did. Nor is it a thing that Charis normally does, but the tv show wanted it so *shrug*. We sang Black Sabbath's "Changes" and another song that we did last concert, by one of our own singers who is also a songwriter. Over and over and over we sang them, while they took video from multiple angles and recorded the sound again and again. I doubt I'll ever forget the words to either one, at this point.

Then, at long last, Kelly Osborne came in holding her dog Pauline, talked briefly to our conductor and our current and incoming presidents, and she and the video directors confirmed the plans. We would start out singing our own song, and then after Ozzy came in we would immediately switch to "Changes". And that is what happened; we sang while they filmed Ozzy and fam reacting to our singing. She told us afterward that she cried, and that her dad did as well, that it is a song that is very meaningful to both of them. The audio engineers asked us to sing it a second time, they redid all the video, we got some group photos with Ozzy and Kelly (and the dog), and the whole thing was over before two p.m. The whole shtick is that he's being surprised at where they take him, and we were told that when they brought Ozzy to the church he was like, "Why am I in a church?" The episode is expected to air sometime in late June/July: you'll hear details as soon as I do.

Charis stayed behind for a little while and also recorded a video to be sent to Ellen Degeneres asking her to send us a congratulations video for our 25th anniversary concert (upcoming May 4 & 5), we sang Happy Birthday to the pastor of the church we were in, and I ran away before any of the cleanup. As my chorus sisters knew what was up, no one's going to upset about that.

I got home around two, and spent about an hour decompressing, just hanging out with Rose and playing iphone games. Then it was time to get dressed and ready for the wedding.

Chris married us, as he's ordained with the Universal Life Church, and we had our daughter Rose and Tammie's boyfriend (and my maybe-something-new) Sean as the two witnesses, while Chris's girlfriend Riley took the photos. I'm the one in the tiara, Tammie is the one in the veil.

Photo album here



I don't really feel much different today; the legal arrangements really aren't supposed to and hopefully really won't make any real difference to our family situation, but these few weeks are kind of a weird liminal space anyway. Just getting the license and making the plans changed something, saying the vows changed something else, but until the license is actually recorded with the state we can't make any paperwork changes, so until then it still feels weirdly pending.

After the ceremony and dinner, we went to see Black Panther, which: amazing! But still only the third most exciting thing of Saturday, so. However, I do recommend the film. Go see it. I appreciate it when a movie gives its antagonist(s) a valid and valuable viewpoint, even if their means are suspect.

Last week was exceedingly busy for me. Rehearsals Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings, and concerts Friday and Saturday evenings. I left home at seven am and didn't get home until nearly eleven pm each day. Saturday I did have a bit of a reprieve, since I didn't have to work, and I spent the whole afternoon hanging out with Claudia. But after the show we had to load out the risers, sets and props, and then had an "after party" dinner out, so I didn't get home until one am.

The concerts went amazingly well. We sang some silly songs and some deep and meaningful songs. Act 1 was a peek behind the scenes of Charis rehearsals; there were acted skits between each song that kind of set them into context: A new member comes to join Charis, this is what she experiences. Then Act 2 was the set for the GALA festival in Denver in July which I won't be able to attend but I'm hoping that if I'm still in Charis in four years when the next one occurs that I will be able to go that time.

Here's what we sang. I can't find good examples on youtube of all of them (and we're not on there (yet?).

Act 1

• curtain up


• Another Op'nin', Another Show (Cole Porter, from "Kiss Me Kate")


• Backdrop display: 14 weeks earlier...


• skit about pre-rehearsal chatter, new member shows up


• Scales and Arpeggios (from "The Aristocats")


• skit about "Sectional Identity" (altos vs sopranos)


• Alto's Lament


• skit about singing in foreign languages


• Lambscapes (Eric Lane Barnes)
  
  
  This is basically Mary Had a Little Lamb in the style of...
  
  • I Gregorian Chant
  
  
  • II Handel
  
  
  • III Schubert
  
  
  • IV Verdi - guest soloist
  
  
  • V Orff
  
  
  • (We skipped Movement VI for having too many errors in the sheet music)
  
  
  • VII Gospel
  
  
• skit about production and sets, while setting up for:


• Kiss the Girl (from "The Little Mermaid")


• skit about board meetings


• Lesbian Second Date Moving Service


• skit about announcements


• Announcement Song (music from Another Opnin, Another Show, words by chorus member)

Act 2

• Guest soloist, two arias (that we chorus members didn't get to hear, due to being in the hall lining up for the next piece)


• Freedom Come (sung from the aisles of the theater, social justice photo montage)


• Women Rock the 80's


• Singing for our Lives (Holly Near, arr. our director)


• No Time


• Chapo Pou Fanm (Sidney Guillaume, in Haitian Kreyol)


• Real Clothes (Melinda Ohlemuller and Symmetry)


• Jambalaya (Hank Williams)

Encore

• teach a verse of Singing for our Lives to the audience, sing with them from the aisles

14 weeks earlier... (as the early backdrop for the concert said)

This January, I joined the St Louis Women's Chorus, CHARIS. One of my Facebook friends has been posting invitations to the open rehearsals for several years now, and I've generally given it a moment's thought and then forgotten about it. But this year was different.

One day I was sitting in the living room talking to Tammie, complaining that there wasn't enough group singing in my life (it's one of the very few things I miss about regular church attendance), and saying that while pagan chant is enjoyable, it just wasn't Quite The Thing for me. "I wanna sing SHOW TUNES!" I lamented. The very next day, there was a Facebook invite from Alison. (She goes by Al, but for purposes of differentiation, she's going to be Alison here.) So having been slapped in the face by my sign from the universe, I went to my first rehearsal.

After the first one, I also dragged Rosa to them. I told her she should come to three rehearsals, but I wouldn't force her to keep coming after that if she hated it. "But there's another 16-year-old that joined, Laurel, and you have a lot in common." Rosa came for rehearsals for a while, but she had told me from the beginning that she didn't want to perform. I was hoping she'd change her mind, but she never did, and after six weeks or so she also developed a wheeze that seemed to get worse after singing. I decided to let her drop out so that the remaining group could concentrate on blending our sound among the ones who really were going to perform, and because she and Laurel were becoming a distraction by whispering together during practice.

It's been a lot of hard work, weekly rehearsals as well as private practice time (which for me has mostly been in the car, singing along with our practice tracks) and two full-day Saturday rehearsals. But it was only just barely enough time to learn all the songs by heart and get my part down sufficiently so as not to slide onto the next section's part instead. At the last minute (last Wednesday's rehearsal), we had to give up on memorization for one particularly difficult song and work out a smooth way to bring the music folders out for it. Too many of the chorus members just hadn't been able to memorize it. I'd gotten close, but I would have needed about one more week to get there--a week we obviously didn't have.

I am the sort of singer who really isn't naturally "good". I don't have perfect pitch, not even close, and I can only just manage relative pitch with moderate accuracy (i.e., go up or down a step or half step or a third or whatever). Inside my head, my imagined music sounds perfect, but what comes out my face when I start singing almost never matches it, and even I can tell it doesn't. However, with A LOT of practice and/or a strong singer to listen to and follow, I can sing pretty well.

So this has been something of a stretch goal for me. Something I knew I could do, but would have to work hard at. And that's been a really good thing for me.

The only bummer is that I'd been hoping to make some new friends out of the chorus, and that hasn't really happened. Yet? Everyone has been friendly at the rehearsals and such, but no one has yet clicked with me personally. It is still a source of community, though, and that's good.

I'm not going to be able to attend many of the other Charis appearances over the summer due to conflicts, but I am planning to stick with it for next fall.