I am still stressed and burned out this morning. At least according to my several high blood pressure readings this morning. Nice. Then I discovered I neglected to take my meds yesterday. Not sure how related that is to my high readings, but it does show I was stressed enough yesterday to forget to take my daily meds.

Church was a bit out of control yesterday.

I had choir members unhappy. In the pregame rehearsal, they were unhappy with my rehearsal techniques, two of them visibly annoyed when I didn’t do what they wanted me to do fast enough, another picked up on the fact that I was doing something and waited until I was done to tell me what I should do next. Good grief. And there was the soprano who was weeping throughout the rehearsal (not one of the ones yelling at me).

I managed to at least act like I was the person in the room in a good mood despite all the weird behavior.

When we finally got downstairs to start the service, the crowd noise was louder than usual. There were two visiting children sitting in the back row shouting at themselves and other people. We start services in Lent with a Taize chant. Jen has put a note in the bulletin to the effect that we want to begin with a contemplative moment.  I have asked the choir to “oo” the chant through twice before singing it softly to help this.

Yesterday in the pandemonium preceding this moment, my boss looked at me as I was approaching the piano eyeing the screaming kids. She quietly said to me, “Good luck!”

The only thing I could think to do was what I did the previous week, begin improvising very softly with a sort of minimalist pattern of high notes kind of like very quiet bells. I couldn’t really hear what I was doing. I added a bit of a chord with the left hand. Gradually the crowd noise began to grow  less.

I cued the choir to “oo” and we were off. It was an artful moment in the face of the usual American lack of politeness and awareness.  I did notice that the children in the back row had begun to whisper loudly instead of shouting. I thought that was a bit of a successful thing.

My head was spinning after church. I played a difficult setting by Francis Jackson as the postlude and did it pretty well if under the ideal tempo. Of course, the crowd noise made me glad that at least this week I had schedule a postlude that wasn’t soft.

We drove over to say hi to my Mom and then came home. I suggested to Eileen we go to the Sushi place for lunch. We can’t keep doing this. It costs too much. It’s not an expensive place to eat. Yesterday’s meal was around $50 with no booze.

I decided to go practice organ before I lost all of my ebbing energy. I carefully rehearsed the postludes for the next two Sundays (a charming fugue by Gerald Near and the first movement of the Art of Fugue by Bach).

Came home and listened to this lovely video.

Esperanza Spalding is the real deal. I put this up on Facebooger. Martini time came an hour earlier last night.