Stress is creeping back in my life (although my blood pressure remains good). Yesterday was an example. I was late for two things (I hate being late), a meeting with my boss and my second ballet class.

I am finding ballet class more stressful. Julie is weirdly being very nice to me. I’m sure we see this situation differently—-the fact that she is choosing to lay me off for a semester. She did email me the names of the dance people so that I can research them a bit and sound half way intelligent in a class discussion on Monday.

I enjoy being included in this way. But I find it incongruous that Julie seems to value my work so much, but at the same time does not see a need to include me in a semester.

I am wondering about it. It seems to me that by the time next fall rolls around I am likely to be doing something else that will be more interesting to me than resuming the ballet accompaniment work. Or else I will value my down time and feel that I can afford not to work at Hope College (something I’m not wild about anyway since it is a bigoted institution). 

Anyway, by the time choir rehearsal arrived yesterday I was exhausted and on edge. I gave a good rehearsal however. It was a difficult one since the soprano section was effectively absent. It was literally absent as we began rehearsal: not one soprano. One soprano had texted me she was ill and wasn’t coming. Another announced Sunday she was skipping rehearsal to attend an important soccer game in which her son was playing.

That leaves two. One arrived late and was also ill. Too ill to sing. She came to listen and I supported her and pointed it out to the other choristers. Finally the fourth arrived. She was exhausted and literally fell asleep during the rehearsal (at least that’s what she said, I didn’t notice it).

The difficulty is that the omission of the soprano part makes the remain sections have to weirdly adjust. It’s just not the same without one fourth of the music no matter how I try to play the part on the piano.

After rehearsal I was satisfied I had managed my basic trick which is to be the person in the room who is in the best mood and enjoying himself and keeping people alert and connected after a long day.

Today I have two meetings and three rehearsals. It shouldn’t be too bad a day despite that. I am meeting with a woman who has offered to be a sort of “den mother” to a short term children’s choir. She has said she will talk to parents and feel them out about how realistic it would be to do something like this. Unfortunately she is moving slowly and time is passing.

I am also meeting with one of the curates (Jodi). She asked me for some help looking at music resources for her to use with her programs. This is also easy.

I have been prepping for the Jodi meeting this morning and will do a little prep for the den mother meeting.

Another stress point is helping our office administrator keep the high quality of the bulletin. Yesterday she handed a proof copy (admittedly not finished) of Sunday’s bulletin. She had cut the psalm tone in two and stretched it from margin to margin distorting the music so badly that it was unreadable.

I tried to help her (in between all the other things I had to do). But finally ended up making the choir’s Wednesday rehearsal copy myself. This morning I plan to ask her to start over and not split the tone in two. We’ll see how that works out.

Last Sunday’s bulletin was riddled with mistakes. They were not the kind I expect my office administrator to catch (like inaccurate solo music titles and references to hymns we weren’t going to sing in the Music Notes that I had prepared). But Rev Jen and I have promised each other to keep working on this.

You can see I’m tired. I always find myself talking too much when I’m exhausted. Thanks for reading.