Rehearsals for the annual Lessons and Carols service at church began last Tuesday evening, in the freezing-cold church where we go every week. I'd never been at the altar before, except for confirmation and communion, so facing the pews was a little jarring, but only a little.

As our congregation is small, we combine with another Episcopal church (which ironically is close to our house, but the one we chose has staff that return phone calls and answer email). They're congregation is also small, and really, the neighborhood doesn't need two Episcopal churches, but ours is very much “high” church, and still uses the 1928 version of the Book of Common Prayer, while the other is a bit more relaxed.

In any case, rehearsal was challenging on Tuesday because I was stuffy-headed, so couldn't hear well, and the only other alto was a very sweet but completely tone deaf member of our regular choir. I try never to sit near her, even though she's completely dear, because she meanders through music the way a drunk wanders a dark alley, but with only two of us, I had no choice. This morning, another of our choir members was in the alto section with me, as was Sister A, from the other church, who has a rich alto voice. The three of us blended well, and ignored our tone-deaf friend, for the most part. However, I'm now a little nervous, because there are two songs during which the sopranos sing a descant and the altos sing the melody in their place, and I'm the only person in the alto section who can hit the high notes. The others drop down an octave, on those pitches. This is FINE when we're not supposed to be carrying the melody, but makes things a bit ponderous when we are. Guess who will be doing LOTS of vocal warm ups and range-stretching exercises in her shower for the next few weeks?

It was nice to chat with Sister A during our down-time. She complimented my range and voice – hers is beautiful. She also mentioned that Fuzzy has a beautiful voice (he does, he does!) but I'm not sure he heard that. He sings bass, if you can imagine. But then, people who've only heard me speaking casually think I have a much higher singing voice than I do.

I spent the evening hemming my surplice so it'd be ready tomorrow. It's the worst hemming job EVER, as I was fighting my own lack of practice with this sewing machine, the machine's desperate need for a tune-up, and cheap thread, and I will probably rip the hem out and re-do it during the week, or have it professionally altered, but for tomorrow, it'll be fine, at least, and there's comfort in the knowledge that, now that we're robing for Mass, I can wear comfy clothes to church because no one will see.

Though, I have a sudden urge for extremely dramatic jewelry.

It's nearly midnight, but it's been a long day – rehearsal at ten, cleaning almost all day, cooked a roast as well, and then sewing (Fuzzy had to help with the replacement needle, and we had to make a trip to find emergency thread), and we have to be back for “normal” choir rehearsal at 8:30 in the morning.

May you all have a restful Sunday, and a fabulous week.

Permalink at MissMeliss.com

Over the last several years, I've run across many blogs talking about the Holidailies in December, and last year, I finally figured out that they referred to a writing meme, of sorts. Members commit to posting at least daily from December 7th – January 6th. You can register at the Holidailies site, either as a portal member, which means that you'll be posting excerpts to their main page, or an at-home member, which means you'll be writing, but not posting excerpte, or a reader, which means you commit to surfing blogs and highlighting the entries you think should be shared.

I'm participating again this year, and am really looking forward to it. My blogging has been unfocussed lately, so I think I really need a “project” to get me back on track.

They're capping portal members at 160, so if you haven't registered yet, consider doing so now.

Permalink at MissMeliss.com

Last weekend we received the annual invitation to the Christmas celebration in the park near our house (but we've got dinner guests coming that night), and strong encouragement to wrap the trunks of our curbside trees in lights, if nothing else.

Yesterday, I spent a pleasant hour bedecking the hedges and trees with white twinkle-lights, enjoying the brisk afternoon, even though my fingers and nose became uncomfortably cold. Not that I have much to complain about weather-wise. It's been dry, windy, and cool, but not really COLD for the last week. We need rain. I think we're all craving it, actually, because everything feels parched, but at least it's not hot.

Still, when I came in from playing with the lights yesterday, I would have enjoyed a crackling fire and a mug of hot chocolate. Instead, I cleared most of the music from my Zen Micro and replaced it with Christmas tunes, mostly gleaned from Napster's playlists-to-go (I love that feature).

Now, I'm sitting here sipping coffee and trying to make myself focus on ANYTHING (I'm having a bad brain day), and polishing the Christmas card list. (This is your last opportunity. If you either want MY address or want me to have yours, please email melissa AT missmeliss DOT com. )

I had all these pretty words to describe the lights and the weather, but I'm so unfocussed that pretty words just aren't happening. Sorry about that. Interesting stuff will follow eventually.

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If you could ask a car salesperson/dealer any question that is NOT specific to a particular car, what would you ask?

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The Alchera Project is a monthly selection of writing prompts for member bloggers to use as jumping off points. This post is for the “Grab Bag” option for the period of 10/30 – 12/01.

Deanna isn't a novice at singing, really, though she feels like one as this is her first Christmas concert that involves an actual church. Oh, sure, she sang with school choirs, had solos, made her entrance into community theatre at the tender age of ten, but somehow, standing with the other choristers in the cold sanctuary, the music is different, her heart is different.

The mood is broken when the puffy-haired woman next to her opens her mouth. Sure, Martha is a sweet old woman, sort of grandmotherly, and not a little dotty, but some people just should not be able to sing. The notes she offers forth with a flourish are not known to human kind. (Deanna wonders, idly if Martha is perhaps an alien, attempting to communicate, or an exiled mermaid, unable to produce melodious sounds unless under several feet of water.)

Midway through the verse, the director stops the choir, and asks each section to sing their part. When he gets to the altos, he pauses near Martha and makes a face that, thankfully, the woman utterly fails to see, so focussed is she on singing the correct words, if not the correct notes. He glances past her at Deanna, and the two exchange a look, acknowledging the gravity of the situation.

The next week at rehearsal, Martha is positioned at the end of the row, where the microphone cannot pick up her graceless warbling.

Permalink at Moonchilde.com

Snow falling outside covered piles of dry leaves, turning them into artistic mounds of icy masonry. The white flakes landed with precision, coming down with the lack of sound that only snow really has, as if it's absorbing all noise, to be released later, when it melts. Inside the window, a little girl presses her nose to the cold pane of glass, and waits for her mother to come home from work.

Permalink at Moonchilde.com

If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, (even if we don't speak often) please post a comment with a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL memory of you and me. It can be anything you want – good or bad – BUT IT HAS TO BE FAKE. When you're finished, post this little paragraph on your blog and be surprised (or mortified) about what people DON'T ACTUALLY remember about you.

Consider it a short writing exercise, just something to waste a few minutes of time, if you like.

Permalink at MissMeliss.com

So, ten minutes ago, roughly, I finished this year's NaNo project, coming in at just a hair over 50k words. While other years have been easy, this year, the project has been a struggle, and I had to fight to finish. In analyzing it, I've learned that I much prefer short stories and essays to novel length work, at least as a writer, though I do think some stories require the length of a novel to be told well. Though it may not seem so here, I guess I'm just naturally concise.

I've pretty much decided that this will be my last year with this project. I've completed it three years in a row, and never bothered to go back and edit. This time, some of the material I've generated, I WANT to edit, and I'm flirting with going back to the old stuff, and making it actually saleable as well. Too, I don't need NaNo to MAKE me write. I write anyway. I may not blog every day, but that's just one part of what I'm doing.

You'll notice that I've not posted any of what I've written for this project. There's a reason for that – I don't like posting raw forms of stories. Oh, I do it on moonchilde.com with OneWord and prompts, but those are completely different sorts of exercises.

That being said? I've enjoyed my time with NaNoWriMo, I just don't NEED it any more.

Permalink at MissMeliss.com

It doesn't feel like home, really, without the pooches, and yet at the same time, it's kind of nice to be able to unpack without having to rescue things from small teeth and claws…and bladders. Still Monday morning cannot come soon enough. I want my entire 'family' back together.

We left Branson this morning, even though we could have stayed til tomorrow, because we were both tired, and there was really no point in lingering. The fact that we didn't have to rush meant that we took 71 all the way to 40 (in Arkansas) instead of taking the 540 route that is faster, but not as cute. We stopped to take pictures at a place called “Artist's Point” where they have the most amazing view of their valley, as well as a mom-n-pop roadside stand with homemade candy and preserves, popcorn, free coffee, and some very pretty crafty things that are NOT as kitchy as those we saw in Branson. Really. Along with honey and jam and cinnamon apple butter, they also offered jars of sorghum molasses, which I'd never tried, and so, after asking the shop-owner to promise not to laugh, I asked exactly what sorghum IS, and then bought some (I like molasses) to take home.

In the last 36 hours, I've seen a professional production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat that was entertaining, but barely beyond the level of a good college show. Fortunately, we managed to get 2-for-1 tickets WITHOUT a timeshare sales pitch/tour, and really $15/each for center orchestra isn't bad. We had fun, anyway, and the music was good. A nice touch was that the actor playing Jacob also acted as our host, and worked his way through the entire orchestra section asking people where they were from, and offering personal welcomes to the show. The cast also comes out for autographs, after, but while there were a couple performances that were worth mentioning, I'm beyond the need for autographs. (Book signings don't count.) Truly, I've never much seen the point.

The fourteen members of Fuzzy's immediate family (me, his parents, his sister and brother, and their spouses and children) had dinner at a buffet place called Sadie's last night. Not a great fan of buffets, I expected it to be carb-laden and scary, but it was actually pretty good. The ribs were excellent, they offered chicken livers and meatloaf as options (guess what Fuzzy had), and I tasted okra for the first time ever (it was batter-fried, and actually, I quite liked it, for it tasted sort of like a cross between celery and eggplant).

The rest of the evening involved a long game of Scotland Yard with Fuzzy, his brother-in-law, two of our nephews, who, at 14 and 17 years old have become kind of cool to hang out with, and Flavia, a foreign exchange student whom Fuzzy's sister's family is hosting. (She's from Switzerland, speaks German and a little Italian, but no French, and turns 21 in two weeks – we had offered her the sofa-bed in the rented condo where we were staying so she could have a break from the chaos of family, and it's made me want to host a student of our own.)

This morning, we packed early, drove Flavia to the other condo so the others could leave, and then realized we hadn't returned our own keys. We trekked back across Branson to do that, and finally left town at around eleven. After stopping once for lunch, once to play tourist, and once for gas (everything here is @ $2.03/gallon, and the CitGo in Checotah, OK was only charging $1.88, so it's fortunate that that junction was our half-way point) we arrived home around 7:30, and have since hit the grocery store for enough food to last til I do a big shopping on payday and watched an episode of LOST that was waiting for us on the TiVo.

I still haven't finished my NaNovel, though I'm close. I didn't write anything while away, but have scenes in my head that I just need to put on paper. I also didn't make any audio posts – meant to, but never got the chance – so if you didn't see any, it's not that you missed them.

I hope all of you in the states had happy Thanksgivings and those of you elsewhere had good weekends.

Bed now.

Permalink at MissMeliss.com

We didn't leave home at 6:00 AM on Tuesday, but we were on the road (as in, finished with the Starbucks run) by 6:45, so we were happy. I slept, for the most part, until we hit the Oklahoma state line, at which point I had to laugh. As I told Fuzzy, “I don't know if the phrase 'praise God and pass the ammunition' was invented in Oklahoma or not, but if it wasn't it should have been'.” Why? Because apparently the catch-phrase, at least on businesses off 75, is “Y'all want ammo with that?”

Seriously, every business we passed (with the possible exception of McDonald's) was offering ammunition. We passed roadstands labelled, “Fruit & Ammo,” “Used Cadillacs & Ammo,” “Antiques & Ammo” & (my favorite) “Christian Books & Ammo.” It was at once entertaining, and a bit disturbing, and was not at all aided by the atmosphere of economic depression that seemed to loom – the front page of the local paper read “Sun Sets on GM Plant.”

Crossing into Arkansas the ambience changed, as did the landscape. Suddenly we were driving through lush greenery, and then climbing into the mountains. While the Ozarks are nothing like the Rockies or Sierras (the ranges I consider 'home' ), they are beautiful, especially when adorned in fall colors. I'd love to spend a weekend in a quiet B&B in these mountains.

Branson itself is not my cup of tea. It really is a Christian version of the Borscht Belt, and commercialized religion really bothers me. It is in no way a sincere mission when shows are making money singing praise music, just a way of making money. On the one hand, I appreciate the marketing, but mostly, I find myself wanting to flee as quickly as possible to someplace free of kitsch and smarm.

And yet, we're managing to have fun. My mother-in-law's gift to the entire family was a day at Silver Dollar City, which is sort of like Concentrated Branson, with a Dickens Faire flair. We saw a musical version of A Christmas Carol that was reasonably well done, and the sing-along train ride through the lights was pleasant, as were the tree-lighting and light show in the main square, and the food stands actually offered some really delicious skillet/stir-fry concoctions of red and sweet potatoes, green beans, onions, and yes, okra (well, it IS the Ozarks).

Yesterday was devoted entirely to family – Fuzzy's aunt had organized an incredible amount of food (turkey, ham, and several casseroles, fruit salads and regular salads, pecan-crusted yams, and more desserts than anyone really needs to know about) – these midwestern women really know how to host a buffet. The afternoon was spent in game-playing and picture viewing, and then at five pm we switched into Christmas mode, with all the kids getting stockings, and the adults engaging in a gift swap that was hilarious. (A pizza cutter and a quilted apron were the hot items, while Flavia, my sister-in-law's foreign exchange student has become addicted to one of those maze-games where the ball bearings release a money sleeve.) We scored a copy of Dead Poet's Society and a Christmas table-runner and matching placemats in exchange for a lavender bath kit and two pounds of Ghirardelli chocolate squares.

After the gift exchange, Fuzzy's immediate family congregated in their cabin and we spent a few hours just talking and catching up, while the kids watched endless episodes of “That's So Raven.” Today, I'm writing this from Panera, the only place in town with free wifi, or any wifi, with Fuzzy and his brother Bill also fulfilling their geek quotient (everyone else is off shopping). This afternoon, we're seeing Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and tonight there's the Trail of Lights. Tomorrow, everyone leaves, and Fuzzy and I are debating staying through til Sunday morning, or leaving tomorrow also, and taking a leisurely drive through Arkansas before heading home.