Today, during the end of the day announcements, several young crusaders - um, announced is the only verb coming to mind here - that tomorrow is Hobby Day at school! They invited all and sundry to wear clothing that reflects our individual pursuits and passions so that we all can appreciate the range and diversity of interests at Upper Socioeconomic Middle School.
"My hobby is naked sunbathing!" I exclaimed merrily to my class. "I can't wait to wear that outfit to school tomorrow!"
Twenty-five heads turned in my direction. Twenty-five pairs of eyes focused on mine. Behind those eyes, twenty-five brains kicked into action. Gears turned. Dots were connected. Other shoes dropped. Then, in 5...4....3....2....1....
It was a good thing the day was over anyway, because with that, they were gone. "But I thought your hobby was kicking kittens," one student wondered. "That was last week," I explained. (Clearly I am not embracing Hobby Day in the spirit in which it is intended.) (Clearly I am also not a suitable role model for the young and impressionable.) (But I digress.)
As the rest of the class chuckled to themselves, one young lady started to look a little panicky. "You're...not.... you're not going to....do that?" she said nervously. To be honest, if I were a young adolescent, and MY kinda-mom-aged teacher had threatened to show up to school in her birthday suit, I would've sweated it a bit, too. I quickly set her mind to rest - although one little, teeny-tiny corner of my brain considered playing on her gullibility, if only for a second.
Diagnosis: The subject shows elements of ADD, ODD, XYZ PDQ, LMNOP, and a bad case of the shoveits.
Narrative Description of Function: Upon first glance, Caroline Some Pig is a reasonably grown-up professional capable of adult-level functioning in the work world. However, upon closer observation, it quickly becomes clear that she is, in fact, barely hanging on to the last scrap of her sanity by the skin of her teeth.
Observable Behaviors: When presented with multiple, conflicting priorities that must be completed within a limited amount of time (cf. attending meetings, preparing the classroom for the coming year, planning lessons, and performing paperwork), Mrs. Some Pig clearly is not able to use executive function to determine which tasks truly are more urgent and worthy of her focus. As a result, she begins ALL the tasks listed above and performs none of them well, ping-ponging among them more and more rapidly until she is hopelessly confused. When overwhelmed, she will reach a point of overload, generally recognizable by the fixed stare on her face and the accompanying smell of burned hair. Mrs. Some Pig shows a tendency to "zone out" during group work by reading emails, forwarding Natalie Dee comics, and mentally composing blog posts. In addition, Mrs. Some Pig demonstrates dysfunctional coping mechanisms, such as perseverating on unimportant tasks ("I have to get new borders for my bulletin board! Now! How can I get anything else done until my bulletin board is ready?!?") and obsessing over minor inconveniences (WHAT?!? I have to wait for the photocopier?? But there are, like, ten people between me and the copier! What is wrong with these people?? DON'T THEY KNOW I NEED THE COPIER???). She uses these concerns to distract her from the work at hand that really does need to get done until she is completely unable to figure out her gluteus maximus from her elbow.
Action Plan: The following strategies will be implemented in accordance with the IEP:
Break large, multi-step tasks into simpler steps, e.g., shutting up, sitting down, etc.
Offer frequent praise once each step is completed.
Use simple rewards (a cup of coffee, mani/pedi, or gin and tonic) to reinforce success.
Encourage focus during longer, more difficult tasks by dangling the threat of a pink slip in front of her face.
Sympathize with the co-workers who have to work with this mess. Condolences are welcome.
...but actually, it's mine! Fortunately, it's not one of those huge-milestone-oh-my-Buddha-I've-done-nothing-with-my-life-so-I'm-spending-the-day-huddled-under-the-covers birthdays, just a run o' the mill, oh-yeah-I'm-older birthday. I helpfully suggested to Warren that he could combine his tenth anniversary gift with my birthday gift. The new anniversary-gift guide says that diamonds are appropriate for your tenth. "I wonder how you'll give me my lovely new diamond ring?" I mused out loud over breakfast today. "Maybe you'll surprise me by giving it to me in something!"
Warren squirmed.
"Or maybe you'll just give me a nicely-wrapped gift box at the end of the day when I'm least expecting it!"
Warren looked discomfited.
"You know what the old 10th-anniversary gift was, don't you?"
"Tin?" Warren perked up.
"I know there's an old tuna fish can in the recycling, dear!"
Since I can expect to get from my spouse what we always give one another for our birthdays (i.e., nothing), and since I already got my birthday gift from India (a potholder she made with loving hands), I figured I'd put together a little list of gifts my loyal readership can get me. If you feel so inclined as to express your gratitude for my existence, and you don't feel like getting me a diamond eternity band, you can pick from the following tokens of appreciation. Any and all would be most welcome.
An end to the Invasion of the Bedsnatchers. Every night, one or both of our little angels come into our bed sometime between 2 and 4 a.m. Every. murtherlurvin. night. This was fine when they were each 0.35 of a person or less, but now that they are each at least half a full human being or more, it is rather less endearing. I would like to get in the habit of waking up without finding myself perched precariously on the edge of the mattress, devoid of covers, or with extra feet and hands in my face, or all three. Thanks for nothing, attachment parenting!
Peace between cats and dogs. Specifically, MY cats and dog. Molly has taken to living in my bedroom because she is terrified of the dog, and no amount of Feliway or petting seems to help. This is particularly ironic as this dog is about as mellow as a dog can be. Which leads me to the next gift:
A translator for cat feelings a la the dog collar in Up so that the cat can just tell me she's pissed off, instead of expressing her ire by sneaking behind the washer and pissing on the random items of clothing that have worked their way back there over the years. Okay, so no one wears snap-up onesies anymore, and it was probably a good thing that I had to clean up back there, but I'd prefer to do that of my own free will and not becaues the ammonia fumes were about to kill me.
Moving on, how about moving the start of school back an hour? I've said it before and I'll say it again, having to drag my @ss into school for the crack of seven makes. me. crazy. The kids are comatose, I'm barely awake, and no one gets anything out of the first ninety minutes of the day. Even one hour would make all the difference in the world. All the research proves it, the anecdotal evidence proves it, but does anyone listen? No.
I'd also not turn up my nose at a world where chocolate is health food and cabbage is fattening. And you can put your dark-chocolate-is-healthful argument in a sack, mister, because I don't *like* dark chocolate, and I'm not talking about eating one little half-inch square now and again, either. I mean, I want Snickers and Reece's to be right up there with carrots and grapes as far as nutrition is concerned. Oh yeah, you can put okra in the "foods you have to limit" category as well. And beets.
While I'm reaching, I also want the American public to get its history straight. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are NOT the essential freedoms protected in the Constitution; they're our inalienable rights as listed in the DECLARATION. The Tea Party needs to change its name because the original Tea Party participants didn't hate taxation per se, they were angry about taxation WITHOUT REPRESENTATION in Parliament. Cheezis, people, where were you all those years ago when the Schoolhouse Rocks PSAs were running? Maybe we need to dust those off and make them mandatory viewing.
Since it's MY birthday and I can be totally self-centered, I'd like bigger, less frizzy curls. Seriously, the older I get, and the fewer chemical interventions I use, the tighter and more Roseanne Roseannadanna-like my hair becomes. Yes, I know there are amazing treatments out there from Brazil and Japan and whoknowswherethehellelse, and yes, I could have pin-straight hair if I so chose, but do you know what those treatments cost?!? FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS. To START. Never mind the special shampoos and conditioners and treatments you have to buy to keep that up, along with the styling tools and time spent blowdrying, etc. Plus, my hair grows fast, which means more frequent treatments and pretty soon I'm looking at putting a car payment on my HEAD. Uhhhh... NO. But if Mother Nature wanted to wave her magic wand and make my ringlets more Botticelli and less Rhea Perlman, I'd take it!
Oh yeah, I'd also like world peace, freedom in Libya, an end to global warming, a chance to teach the world to sing, and a world where ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony. You know. The usual.
SO, if you should feel so moved to get me something off my wish list, feel free to send it right along. You don't even have to wrap it. Shoot, you don't even need to put a card with it, because if I don't know who sent it, then I don't have to write a thank-you note! Win-win!!!
Well, the Rapture's tomorrow, and wouldn't you know it, that just HAPPENS to be the same day that I've planned for India's 7th birthday extravaganza. (Theme: Potter-palooza! Everything you can think of that has any connection, no matter how remote, to The Boy Who Lived! Games! Cake! Songs! Dance!) I must say, this represents piss-poor timing on the part of the Ancient of Days, as I have been very, very busy this week, and did not have time to sort out who's going act as the cats' doorman should I happen to be whisked up to the heavens, nor to gather the requisite supplies to stave off the zombie apocalypse should I be left here with the rest of you rabble.
Anyway, the supposedly forthcoming Rapture has been as catnip to those of us fluent in sarcasm, which means my Facebook account floweth over with snarky comments. Never being one to turn up a chance to plagiarize myself and score an easy blog post, I thought I'd collate them here:
My status update:
On the plus side, if the Rapture DOES occur tomorrow, I won't have to worry about India's birthday party! On the minus side, the crazy wackadoos will have been right. On the plus side some more, I CERTAINLY don't have to worry about whether or not I'll be taken up to heaven ... I know my @ss is going to be sitting right in this same spot, writing snarky updates on FB!
A friend posted:
Tomorrow @ 6:00PM I'll be at Fenway with Andrea - I suppose there are a lot worse places we could be when the world ends!
To which I replied:
If there's a God, the Sox will be up by 4 and the Yankees will all have diarrhea.
My friend Jack posted:
Eyewitness News at Noon. End of world scheduled for tomorrow. The poor and elderly to be hardest hit.
My response:
IT DAMN WELL BETTER HIT BEFORE I GIVE THIS F*ING BIRTHDAY PARTY OR I WILL BE PISSED RIGHT THE EFF OFF!
Friend: WHOA!!
Me: Actually, if I clean the house, let's have the damn party. I can get Raptured between cake and cleanup.
Okay, here's what we need to know. The earthquake starts at 6pm, but if you're lucky you'll have been raptured up before that time. I think the rapture is at 11am, which kind of sucks because I'll be at work. However, I will have had my 10:30 coffee by then and that will make facing the tribulation much easier.
To which I responded:
India's birthday party is tomorrow and there is a big honking birthday cake sitting here until cake time, which is at THREE. If the frigging Rapture takes me up and I miss out on cake, I would NOT want to be the greeter at the heavenly gates to gets to handle MY case because I? Will be PISSED OFF.
Then I broke my ironclad rule about only posting one status update per day (what the hey - how often does Rapture Eve come around???) and posted this:
Okay, I need your Rapture soundtrack: "End of the World (As We Know It)", "Rapture," "I'm a Believer," "Almost Paradise" ...others???
And got in response (so far):
"Don't Stop Believing"
"Stairway to Heaven"
The Doors "The End" (think soundtrack of Apocalypse Now; cheery) and for a somewhat lighter feel, a favorite synth pop hit from my college days in the 1980s: Q-Feel's "Dancing in Heaven" (find it on Youtube it's classic big hair, spandex 80s pop with rather apropos lyrics)
Sexy thing by Hot Chocolate
Bangles- "Heaven is a Place on Earth"
"Cheeseburger in Paradise"
The Hokey Pokey. Cuz what if the Hokey Pokey IS what its all about?
I don't want to miss a thing - Steven Tyler
"So Long, it's been good to know ya"
Sympathy for the Devil. Cuz you KNOW Keith Richards is going to be down here with the sinners! Oh! And Only the Good Die Young! Thanks, Billy Joel!!!
Dont worry, be happy - Bobby McFerrin
Running with the Devil- Van Halen
Devil went down to Georgia - Charlie Daniels
When the World Ends - DMB
Aloha oe. Because I plan to be sitting on a beach in paradise when the big day comes.
When I lost all sense of common decency and contributed to the overpopulation of the planet by 0.000000000000000213%, I realized that we were going to have to establish some household rules. [An aside: I totally made that statistic up out of my own cranium. I have no idea what percentage of 7-plus billion my two kids represent.] [Math whizzes, feel free to inform us all.] Anyway, I knew what the basic rules would be - play fair, share, be kind, wash hands before dinner, all the usual suspects - but what I didn't realize was just how many bizarre - and bizarrely specific - rules I was going to have to invent, often on the fly, and then enforce with the seriousness and rigidity of the Vulcan High Command. Here, forthwith, is a representative sampling:
You may not lick your sister. Not even if she tastes good.
I do not want your feet in my face, ever. In fact, I do not want your feet anywhere in the near vicinity of my face. If I tell you to move your feet and you do not move your feet, I'm going to move them for you. To your room.
You must have on underwear to sit on the couch. I have seen the results of your standard of personal hygiene in the wash frequently enough to know that I do not want your bare hindquarters anywhere near the upholstery. [Later amended to] No bare butts on the couch [when eldest child noted that one could have on pants without underwear and still sit on the couch].
For eldest child: You and your friend are not allowed to drag the ride-on stuffed horsies and the whiffleball bats into the guest room for the purpose of playing samurai sword fights, particularly when you use younger siblings for target practice. I don't care if there's no one in the guest room; that room is for guests to sleep in. I know your friend is technically a 'guest,' but as she is not asleep at the moment, she is not eligible to be in that room. Because I said so, is why.
Bandaids are to be used for actively bleeding wounds that occurred on a truly accidental basis only. Picking at a very old bug bite to make it bleed does not constitute an accidentally-acquired wound and does not make you eligible for seven bandaids, but only the pink ones.
The Bandaid amendment: You have to take the first bandaid that comes out of the box that is the proper size for the wound in question. Otherwise it may be suspected that you caused that scratch for the sole purpose of being able to apply five of your favorite color and character bandaids to your body.
The Bandaid corollary: Bandaids are for application to the human body. The fact that you can't find the tape does not make bandaids an acceptable substitute.
The tape addendum: Tape is intended to stick one item to another item. You need only one piece of tape to accomplish this end. The last time I gave you a roll of tape and left you unsupervised, I returned to find that you had created an astract sculpture and we had no tape left. That is why you cannot have the entire roll of tape.
A request for you to wash your hands must result in the application of water and soap to skin, presumably for longer than 0.7 seconds. Attempts to hornswoggle parental units into providing dinner by turning the faucet on full-blast and hiding in the bathroom for five minutes are strongly discouraged. Here's a tip: If you are growing potatoes under your fingernails, we are going to figure out that you didn't wash your hands.
We are all concerned about the long-term health and viability of 'Mudder Erf'. However, when we are far from home and dressed in our best going-out-to-dinner duds, we are not going to stop to pick up a wayward half-full beer bottle and several mysterious pieces of trash with our bare hands when no trash recepticle is present in the near vicinity, no matter how much we want to reduce, reuse, and recycle.
Stop repeating everything your sister says, or I'll deliberately turn my back and let her pinch you.
Drinking is a one-way process. If you can't swallow the milk you just sipped out of the cup, spit it in the sink, not back into the cup.
The one-way drink rule addendum: Do not try to palm off your backwashed milk on your sister. That's not nice, nor does it promote good health.
The correct way to show that one requires a tissue is by asking, "may I have a tissue," not by expelling the contents of one's nose all over one's face and then standing in front of the nearest adult and yelling, "Mommmmmmiiiieeeeeeeeeee!"
The following things are off-limits to you until further notice, so don't even bother asking: Getting a cell phone, piercing your ears, having sleepovers, drinking coffee, driving, having a boyfriend, and having a baby. The mere thought of these, particularly the last three, gives me palpitations.
I present these both as a public service to those of you contemplating having children, or whose children haven't progressed to the point of needing rules yet, and as a way to check if my kids happen to be the most bizarre creatures on the planet (probably). If you never in a million years thought your family would have to have a scotch-tape-usage policy, trust me, you will - and if it's not scotch tape, it will be something else. If you grew up with an unusual set of rules, or if you have ever found yourself making up arcane rules on the spot, please, share them in the comments. I'm sure there's only a jillion or so situations I haven't thought of yet.
Welcome to my very firstest guest post EVER, kindly supplied by my friend Jack. Jack is a regional, if not a national treasure, and a master of the Facebook status update. I actually cribbed this from a string of his FB posts and begged his permission to use them. Facebook statuses (stati?) being rather ephemeral, I hope this will help his genius to live on in cyberspace. Without further ado, here are:
10 THINGS THAT HAVE TO GO IN 2011.
10) Calinda, from The Good Wife. Love the show, she is retarded. Spilling out of her shirt, in a mini with thigh high FM boots, she is the prototype of the private investigator. A 20 something who has managed to date half the cops, pols and power brokers in Chicago. She can infiltrate the FBI, Pentagon, perhaps even the DOD and NASA. Give her time. Just ridiculous!!!
9) Patriots cheerleaders (cold weather only). Exactly what team spirit is derived from watching a line of frostbitten women who look suicidal? Put 'em on the jumbotron, send'm home. If I really want to see 32 women with breast implants in track suits in the same place, I'll go eat lunch at the North Shore Mall food court.
8) Any TV commercial involving a giant red bow and a $70,000 SUV. If you have 70k to blow on a Christmas gift, I hope I get you in the grab next year. The red bow is obnoxious. If you insist on gifting a luxury vehicle, put a bow on the keys, drop them in her stocking and leave your neighbors alone. Merry Christmas.
7) Sweet Caroline at Fenway. Some traditions I understand. How the ding dong hell did THIS get started? I didn't like the song in the 70's. It hasn't gotten any better. How embarrassing. (NB: My dentist always used to sing this to me. While he was tightening my braces. With his fingers two knuckles deep in my mouth. He's lucky he still has them - the fingers, that is.)
6) Bill Belichick's post game press conferences. Hey, relax, save the hate mail. I'm talking about HOW they're done. Since there is never, I mean, NEVER any info, he should record all 18 of 'em in pre-season, like the Faith Hill music intro and free up the podium for the players. Imagine this season WITHOUT the Randy Moss interview.
5) Fighting in the NHL. The NHL brought back the penalty shot this year, a game changing event which seems to be overused.Yet you can still commit assault with intent to kill for a 5 minute even strength sit down. Given the salaries, it makes sense to get rid of fighting in the NHL and put it where it belongs: Women's figure skating. The Kerrigan/ Harding Olympics were the bomb.
4) Jersey Shore. Seriously. Have we devolved this far as a species? I don't know what is more troubling, the fact that this drek can end up on public airwaves, or that I watched it to see what the hoo ha was for. There aren't many TV programs that require a post viewing shower. ICK.
3) Brett Favre. He's done everything. He owns the QB page of the record book. He owns the consecutive game streak. He has been a world champion. He has emailed his johnson. Now for the love of Mike, go away. Sports writers will be only too happy to ignore the last 3 years of your legacy. Time to go.
2) Jeremy Jacobs. Well, the B's are struggling again. Time to drag out the old never fail 3 tier solution. 1) Raise ticket prices. 2)Increase beer prices to 17.25 per cup. (21.50 for Sam Adams). 3) Fire the coach. NEVER trust an owner who doesn't attend the games. Jacobs is THE reason the B's haven't won a cup since the Nixon administration. Stop buying tickets, or get used to it.
1) THE NEW YORK JETS. And the Pats need to do it at home. Imagine 65,000 pair of green foam feet with "sniff these" on one side and D-FEET on the other. Is Sexy Rexy the gift that keeps on giving or what?!!!!!! It was hard to get down to a #1, but many thanks to Big Sexy, the mouth that roared. And goodbye JETS.
Hello, SP fans one and all! Or should I say, one and - well, the one! Now that the ho-ho-holiday season is upon us, it is getting to be That Time of year ... you know, the one where you make all kinds of promises to yourself that you're going to stop eating Fluff straight out of the jar and spending all your time watching Baby Monkey on YouTube in favor of cooking well-balanced homemade meals and practicing your conversational French (last aired during a trip to Montreal in 1989). And you do! You really, really do! Until you realize that fruits and vegetables, while healthy and nourishing, are really boring after awhile and your conversational French all happens to center on phrases dealing with your need for the bathroom and desire to take the subway, which is highly risible as you live in the middle of Dakota; when, pray tell, are YOU going to need to tell a Frenchman that you want to take nonexistent public transportation?
But I digress.
Anywhat, being much, much closer to perfection than the average bear well aware of my propensity for lassitude and sloth, I have decided to beat the holiday rush and make my twenty-eleven resolutions now. Or more precisely, to make my unresolutions. (Hey, if there's such a thing as unschooling, I sure as hell can have unresolutions!) What is an unresolution, you ask? Or not, it doesn't matter, I'm going to tell you! An unresolution is something you never did, or always did, and fully intend to continue not doing/doing in the new year, regardless of the arbitrary dictates of the calendar. So, here goes, in no particular order:
10) I hereby swear upon a stack of whatever text you consider holy (Bible, Koran, Martha Stewart Does Everything Perfectly) that I will continue to diet halfheartedly, exercise grudgingly, and complain about middle-aged weight gain without changing any part of my approach to same.
9) I will continue to covet extremely inappropriate and impractical footwear, although I will continue not to buy them. I am a New Englander by habit and by choice (to some degree), so my wardrobe is composed of 99% extremely practical and reliable garmets made of wool, cotton, microfiber, or some combination thereof. Needless to say, by that token, my shoes should be sturdy, unisex, and brown. Do you know what I want to put on my feet? Pencil-thin stillettoes, that's what; all the better if they are bejeweled, bestrapped, betasseled and bewhatevered to within an inch of their sexy little lives. Yes, I loves me some redonculous shoes, and no, I don't see myself ever living the kind of life that will allow me to indulge that. Sigh.
8) I will not try to become a better person in any way, shape, or form. It has taken me forty-three years to become this snarky, lazy, and unambitious, and dammit, I'm not going to stop now.
7) I will not apologize for the fact that my kids don't participate in Suzuki violin, private language lessons, travel soccer teams or childrens' theater. Any day when we all have clean clothes to wear and no one gets forgotten at a bus stop is a win in my book; any more pressure on yours truly and someone's getting a stilletto heel-clad toe stomp.
6) I will continue to waste a good deal of my mental acuity on thinking up clever status updates and wry responses to other people on Facebook.
5) I will not apologize for the fact that I look forward to taking the girls to the childrens' room at the library because they keep the latest copy of Us magazine down there for the mommies. It's the least they can do, especially since I have to read the same five Berenstain Bears stories to Celeste over... and over... and over.
4) I will continue to feed my kids way too much starch and cheese in its many and varied forms. When it's six p.m. at the end of a long, long day and everyone's howling with hunger and irritation, that is NOT the time to broaden anyone's palate.
3) I will continue to drink coffee like it's the last pot that will ever made in human history and I'd better get me some now before it's all gone.
2) I will continue to love craft stores wholeheartedly, which includes buying loads of craft materials that I have no clue how to use and no time to learn. I also will continue to scream in anguish when my own children evince the same love, thereby forcing me to spend hours of tedium trying to help them complete projects that are way beyond their skill level and ability to focus which SOMEONE thought would be a good idea to try, WARREN.
1) I hereby reserve the right to continue complaining about being too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer without any recognition of the inherent irony in that.
There! See how easy that was! And I don't have to do anything I wasn't already doing, or stop doing anything I wasn't already not doing. I didn't have to join a gym, buy a computer program, attend a meeting, or keep a log book. And I am 100% guaranteed success in my endeavors. You show me a New Year's resolution capable of making that claim and I will follow it. Until then, Happy Festivus!
Today we took the girls to see Dan Zanes and Friends in concert. A good time was had by all. Well, to be honest, Celeste came down with a fever, I kid you not, during the ride from our house to the concert venue, thus causing her to fall asleep in my lap for the majority of the festivities. India, who I expected would be jumping out of her skin with excitement, took in the whole proceedings with the blase air of one who has been there, done that, and is terribly, terribly above it all now. "Wasn't that fun, honey?" I asked her afterwards, in tones of ecstatic wonderment. "It was okay," she said, with a heavy sigh, "but I thought there would be other kids there." Warren and I gave each other the quizzical eye, since to our thinking, the concert audience consisted of wall-to-wall kids. "Um, honey," I noted, "I think there were a LOT of other kids there." "There were a lot of other LITTLE kids there," she corrected us. "And babies," she added, in scathing tones. "I thought there would be big kids, like me."
So apparently the window has closed on the Dan Zanes years, as far as India is concerned.
Anywhat, while I was watching the aforementioned concert, I was struck by a thought. For those of you who don't know Dan Zanes, he is, shall we say, follicularly gifted, though in a crazed, finger-in-the-light-socket kinda way:
...and those of you who know me know that I am also follicularly gifted, though in a crazed, Roseanne-Roseannadanna-good-perms-gone-bad kinda way:
The thought struck me, what if Dan Zanes and I had had a child together? What on earth do you think the outcome of THAT union would look like???
Probably best for all involved that we will never find out.
I sing in a community choir. If you've heard me sing, you will not be surprised to find out that's it's a non-audition, open-to-anyone affair where all you have to do is show up regularly and promise to try to hit the right notes most of the time, and not to sing when everyone else isn't singing. The best part about the fall season is that most of it is dedicated to Christmas music for our early-winter concert, and you know how much I loves me some Christmas music! (For my friends who are M.O.T., we do perform the one obligatory Hannukah song, which, along the fact that we sing a couple of songs with verses in the languages of various oppressed peoples, means that we are officially Culturally Sensitive. And now back to "Jingle Bells.")
Since we are a chorus that performs Christmas music, we can't avoid singing a number of John Rutter pieces (and that's John RUTTER, accomplished choral composer and chorister at Clare College, Cambridge, not John RITTER, of "Three's Company" fame. Yeah, I know my audience, and I know you are all Philistines like me who wouldn't know that off the top of your head.). I will tell you, if ever I should be fortunate enough to meet this John Rutter character in person, I am going to walk up to him and kick him in the shins. Yes, I know the anonymity of the interwebs encourages people to go to extremes, and violence is never the answer, but I tell you again, I will kick that man square in the shins and never blink an eye. Why? Because John Rutter is out to MESS WITH MY HEAD, people! What John Rutter does, see, is he takes a traditional song, and then he orchestrates it for choral voices so that there are all these little quirks and odd configurations of notes you have to watch for. So just when you (meaning me) have gotten used to a melody that goes teedle, teedle, teedle-y tum te tum te tum* and you've gotten teedle, teedle, teedle-y tum te tum te tumtotally nailed and you are completely confident in your teedle, teedle, teedle-y tum te tum te tum-ing skills, he goes and changes it to teedle tum teedle tum te tee teedle tum! What's fair about that, I ask you?? Oh sure, it makes the piece all "musical" and "harmonious" and stuff, but damn! Where's a little sympathy for the music-sight-reading-challenged, huh? The other thing he likes to do is put the sopranos up in dog-whistle range, leaving us poor altos to squeak and squawk right behind them trying to hit notes on a section of the scale where no alto has any business trying to hit notes. Hellloooo, John Rutter, I'm an ALTO - you know, just a typical, run of the mill, never has the melody, sings the same stupid five notes over and over again, ALTO. There's a reason for that, that reason being, I'M NOT A SOPRANO. When you give altos notes that should be sung by a soprano, do you know how they sound? Awful, that's how!
The other issue has to do with one of the two John Rutter pieces we're singing this season, "The Holly and the Ivy". Throughout this song, we have to sing the following refrain: Oh, the rising of the sun and the running of the deer, the playing of the merry organ, sweet singing in the choir. Now, clearly I have been teaching adolescents for way, WAY too long, because I CANNOT sing the line about "playing the merry organ" without Losing. My. Sh!t. Repeatedly. As in, every single time we have to sing that line, my inner Beavis is all, merry organ! heh-heh-heh-heh. And then I? Am all done for the next five minutes, while I snigger and snicker and snort. Worse yet, stoopid John Rutter has us sing that line staccato for most of the song, which means that we have to make a special efford to EMPHASIZE each word of "playing the merry organ"! And then I fall apart all over again. It's to the point now where I think my fellow altos are sick to death of me sagging sideways and giggling helplessly as soon as we start the windup to playing that damn organ once again. AND, since I don't do anything embarrassing unless I can do it as publicly as possible, I am in the front row of the alto section since I'm an alto I. (Alto IIs sing lower than I can sing comfortably. Range: I don't has it.) Now, come concert time, I will have to sing about playing the merry organ with a straight face or try unsuccessfully to quell my laughter and be forever known The Lady Who Had That Weird Seizure In The Middle Of the Christmas Concert. This is the perfect setup for a vicious cycle of embarrassment, in which I will be concentrating so hard on keeping a straight face that I am guaranteed to crack, which will be even more embarrassing, which means that by the time we hit "playing the merry organ" I will be a straight-up, hands-down, bona fide mess. To which I say, really, John Rutter, you couldn't think of anything else we could play merrily? The marimba? Sousaphone? Horn and Hardart? Surely one so gifted and blessed by the muse could come up with something. And if the muse isn't kind enough to descend to our realm for a visit, perhaps the fear of being kicked in the shins by a chubby, middle-aged Alto I who can't really sing will provide the necessary inspiration.
