Too much going on—

way too much actually. I'm getting ready to go to Long Beach to the convention. I'm writing PR including a couple of pages on my web site for my recital. I'm thinking I need to add another musician—a percussionist—for the last piece on the program and am hoping my choice will be available. I've also been asked to sing a duet—which means organizing rehearsals—the weekend after I return from the convention at the memorial service for an old friend who recently succumbed to cancer. Singing at memorials for people whom I have known is always much harder than if I am not acquainted with the deceased.

Underlying all this is the large quantity of music I have to learn and the enormous amount of just plain physical labor I have to do to strengthen all my singing and support muscles which I have not been using seriously since 1996! The strength is coming back much more quickly than I had any right to expect, thank the Lord. The music part of learning is coming easily, as usual. The memorization of the words is always the most time consuming—and BORING—task in all this. Planning and constructing and/or finding what I will wear to perform this show is another thing that is fun but time-consuming.

Enough with the whining and puling! I love it all every bit or I wouldn't still be doing it after all these years...and voluntarily, too. I'm doing it this time for one other reason than just love of music, singing and performing. My husband and I will be celebrating our 10th anniversary on September 11—it wasn't "911" when we got married as that happened on our 2nd anniversary—which is less than a month before the recital. He and I met three years after I stopped singing professionally. I wanted for him to see/hear me perform the "big stuff" live just once. If I can take this show on the road, great. If I have no luck booking more performances, he will have had the experience of watching me do my thing at least once.

Please don't ask me why I thought of this (heh, heh), but I have a favorite tenor joke: The tenor is at the after-party on the opening night of the opera. He is regaling his hostess with a blow-by-blow description of the beauty and glory of each high note he sang, exclaiming effusively and often about how thrilling it must have been for the audience to hear him on this particular evening, and otherwise expressing his delight in himself and his incredible talent. Suddenly, with a gasp of horror, he comes to himself, and says apologetically to the long-suffering lady, "Oh, how very rude of me! Here I have been going on and on about myself and not giving you a chance to get a word in edgewise! Please, please forgive my rudeness, my dear lady. Do tell me, what did YOU think of my performance?"