Definitely should have done this all in one shot.

Installment Two of this week's Thursday?

We left for school/work around 8.20 and after the routine pseudo-hug from B at the stop sign where we part ways, my brain began shifting from child care to Church care.

I grabbed a coffee on my way in (it was one of those days), and took my first left down the hallway to enter my office.  I was fighting and fighting and fighting the feeling of panic and drowning and being overwhelmed.  I thought that if I could get my Work B work done in about an hour I could go do my errands next and then have two or three hours to chill out and ideally to nap.  The promise of a nap was what enabled me to think I could handle a day that would start before 5 and end after 10.

First things first, I went to find one of the gals I'd been collaborating with for the past four days over the Women's Ministry Event being held that very night.  [Just going to take a moment now to reflect gratefully on the list of four women I was able to work with the past few weeks for this event.  It was a unique experience actually, and I like all those ladies, my sisters.]  This gal was the one who'd be sharing her testimony that evening and we had planned to meet this morning to see how she would do with singing the special song she'd picked out to tie in with her story.  Originally she asked if I would learn it but on Wednesday she mentioned she was feeling like she wanted to deliver it herself which I thought was a capital idea.  I would still learn to sing it as a back-up plan and we both agreed she should have the CD on hand in case neither of us could come through.  (It's a rather emotionally-charged song connected to a rather tough part of her testimony, you see.)

I found her easily and she told me - with what I recognise as pre-nervous body language, tone, laughter - that she thought she had enough to focus on with delivering her testimony that working on singing in front of fifty people would be too much for today.  No problem.  I know that pre-nervousness and I know the decision to take off the plate all that can be taken off when your mind is preoccupied with the daunting something in the near future.

Slightly disappointed at the missed opportunity to duet or to accompany someone I've never worked with (musically) before, I was also moderately relieved because I was feeling like I didn't have time to rehearse that morning.  I wanted to get these slideshows put together because they would take the longest, couldn't be faked and needed to be sent to someone else in good time.  Unfortunately, I have enough tricks and shortcuts in my musical toolbox that practice can always be left til last.

I booted up the computer and in the mean time went to find copies of the songs I'd be leading for corporate musical worship.  I would have done this second but I realised it would be easier to type the lyrics into the slideshow from the binder beside me than to type them from a web browser window I'd have to flip back and forth to.  Something about having the binder done made me extra happy and therefore slightly more relaxed. 

On my way back to the computer I stopped on the threshold of my boss' office holding up two fingers.  "Two things," I announced, hoping my tone and body language would communicate how serious I was this time about not getting caught in another "short" conversation that lasts 45 minutes.  I got the two things out easily and he responded appropriately but somehow, through a miracle of smoke, mirrors and pixie dust, I was still there for twenty-five minutes.  Yet again, I had gotten caught in what I like to call the Web of Interesting.  It's catchful.


Thankfully, a dear aquatic friend had stopped by around minute mark 25 providing the perfect outside-world interruption for me to detangle myself from the Web.  I had been expecting her.  I even gave her mother a hard time when she came in without the anticipated daughter.  I took the consolation hug from the mother, a little surprised at first to find out how much I could have said I [needed] a hug that day/at that time.  Perhaps physical affection is a basic need for human beings.

Groundbreaking.

Underwater Daughter shows up and I am glad.  I don't know when or how she and I turned into such hugberts but it's a nice.  It's a nice something.  I don't hug all my friends and I don't hug often.  But sometimes some times.  I forget that she's only here to drop something off and we're not about to hang out.  My heart sinks slightly but again there's some relief because I still feel like this day doesn't contain enough hours.  She goes and I git to working.


The slides go well.  They take me two and a half hours when they could have taken 45 minutes but I wanted them to be good.  I wanted them to be uniform, aesthetically pleasing, legible and, later, congruent with the decorations for the evening.  When I could have been done, my 44pt Georgia in black on white, I got up, walked twenty feet behind me, spied the peach-based tablecloths and the sunflower centrepieces & accents and went back to my workstation.

I played around with the tone of peach, I picked the gradient and the gradient's direction, I pulled from our Sunday morning background image collection a stunning photo of a sunflower close up that I've only used once before and that I thought would make the perfect "reset" image at the beginning and end of a song set (as opposed to a black screen).

None of that needed to be done and perhaps none of that would be noticed.  But, I wanted to do it.  I wanted to make things pretty and for them to match and if just one person found it engaging or found it facilitated worship, then great.  (It was engaging me and facilitating worship as I hunched over the six-year old Dell in a cold auditorium so it couldn't have been a waste!)  I was making gargoyles on the roof.


I was a little beside myself when I decided to use the sunflowers as intros for each song, to put the title in italics, right justified in the bottom right corner.  The bright blue of the sky and the vibrant yellow was such a neat break from the soft and subtle peach we'd be looking at for the previous and following seven, eight, nine slides.  It was so cool.  I almost felt artsy. I almost sent a text-message to an artsy friend saying simply, "I'm making things pretty!!"  She would have understood.


Completely satisfied, I saved, sent and shut down.  I sauntered down the aisle to practice the solo song I'd been asked to sing and it was going better than it had been for the previous three days but I was still sitting around 60% confidence and asking myself how I would find doing a mediocre presentation that I knew could only be mediocre before I even started.  It doesn't smell like integrity to me and I didn't like it.

But, I had to go.  I had to have lunch, I had to pick up dinner, I had to pick up books, I had to go home and change my clothes and I had to still find time to rest before I needed to be back at Work A in less than three hours.  Sigh.  I just couldn't be there at the piano with my brain so buzzy and with other people within listening range.  It's hard for me to play and/or sing freely if I don't want an audience but have one, even a passive one.


I ate lunch sitting completely erect at the edge of my chair at my desk.  I was flipping through my Twitter feed because I can't do one thing at a time and halfway through the gullet-stuffing exercise I got up to make a few photocopies in case anyone walking by thought I wasn't working.  (I don't even know what that is.)


On one level it was a gloriously enriching, edifying, energising day and on some other level I was completely high-strung from dawn til dusk. (Maybe I needed that stress to keep me awake and alert!)



And here I quit, hoping I will remember enough for Installment Three when my account is four days old.