Christmas, New Year's, etc.

Random thoughts from Christmas and New Year's, now and in the past...

Hrm, let's start with the past, and hey, let's start with a bad memory, shall we?

Did you ever doing something you regret, years in the past, and then even just thinking about it makes you annoyed, angry...or even just laugh?

Well, I have a sort of laugh moment. It was Christmas...I think it was either 1998 or 1999. Peachtree City United Methodist Church. We had been working on a Christmas music program. We had a full orchestra assembled and performed a few services and then Christmas Eve services as well. I was tasked with solo singing what I consider to be one of the nicer Christmas songs, "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day." It really is a beautiful song. I was REALLY excited about it. However, I was at somewhat of a vocal intersection in my life, as my voice had started stabilizing (men's voices don't really "set" until around age 17-25) but I had not really adjusted to it quite yet.

And if you know the song, you know there is a big build in the final verse with a high note that while not impossible to reach (unlike the high note in "O Holy Night") is still rather difficult to hold for your average tenor voice. And to make it worse, the build halts on the high note, then softens immediately into the end of the song. So I've got to belt out this high note, hold it and wait for the director to continue, and immediately go into falsetto for 4 notes and then back into modal (normal) register for the the final 4 notes.

Seriously, if I had the chance to go back and reverse it, I would tell the director - straight up - I'm not going to sing this song. Why? I'll tell you why...

BECAUSE...well, because I totally blew this in ALL 3 PERFORMANCES of the song. I sang 95% of the song perfectly, everything but the 5% of the song everyone waits to hear. I had to basically scream the high note to get it out, and then my falsetto cracked like a 13 year old boy. The final 4 notes of the song were a goner, too, because each time my voice was shaking from the vocal failure I had unleashed on the high note and falsetto.

After each performance, I did a couple of practice runs to fine tune it, but nonetheless, at the successive performances, as if on cue, I did the exact same thing.

If I could have dissappeared behind stage immediately afterward it might have helped my embarassment. But NO...we had to immediately go right into "Sleigh Ride" as if nothing had happened. Sheesh....

So every time I think of that moment now, I have an instant feeling of "holy CRAP...what was I thinking?!?!???" and then I quickly just transition to laughing about it, about how funny it is to sing a song you really like and then to really blow it in front of a huge church audience at the peak of the emotional build, ruining the song immediately. I guess it would have been an even funnier memory if it had been SOMEONE ELSE beside me.

It probably goes without saying that the director didn't ask me to do anymore solos ever again.

Moving along....

This Christmas was a lot of fun. Caleb got some great gifts from Santa Claus (how cool is that?). We did our Christmas here in Dacula a few days in advance as we spent the holiday down in Your Favorite Town with our families. It's really a lot of fun watching him play with toys, and get super excited when he sees all his stuff laid out for him. And this is just the beginning...next few years are prime-time Santa years. I think it's just the greatest thing right now. I'll detail more about it in Caleb's blog sometime in the next few days.

Another funny Christmas memory from the past...

My brother Michael was about 11 or 12 years old I think. He had asked for a drum set for Christmas. That's all he asked for...no candy, no toys, no anything. And as Christmas approached, somehow he got the idea that there was zero chance of him getting his wish. On Christmas morning, he decided he just flat was NOT going to get up and go downstairs to see his Christmas gifts, because he knew there was no drum set down there waiting for him.

At least that's what he thought. But when the rest of us went down there and saw it sitting there waiting for him, we all tried to cajole him into getting up. No dice. BUT...when someone banged on a cymbal and a drum, he practically teleported into the room. Now THAT is a Christmas surprise if I ever saw one. And oh boy, was he bad at playing on that drum set. At least he got Grandma and Grandpa up (their room was about 10 feet away from the drum set). He eventually got better, but that morning he was probably one of the most enthusiastically horrible drummers I've ever seen.

I'm sure his memory of that morning is a little different, probably just "OMG OMG! A DRUM SET! AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!"

A few years later, that drum set was victim of a flood in our basement, but it still sounded okay after that.

And let's not forget New Year's Eve...

Our semi-new tradition is spending New Year's Eve with Andy and Abby. We've probably done it for 4 or 5 years now (except last year, which will always be fondly remembered as the diarrhea/vomiting New Year's Eve in my household).

It's getting more complicated though...kids, dogs, so on and so on. It's nice, though, not going out anywhere and just playing games with some friends all night. We got a bunch of new Wii games for Christmas this year, gonna have to try them out tomorrow night.

Hope you all had a great Christmas, and have a Happy New Year!

Awww...nuts.

Random thoughts about something from a month ago...

So a few days after my birthday last month, there was this scare here at our house. Without getting into the details too much, I can say that it occurred to me that something wasn't quite right, physically speaking. And after about a half a day's consideration (and no shortage of just flat-out fear, to be honest) I finally called a doctor and made an appointment.

And again, dispensing with the details, I got forwarded from this initial doctor's visit along to another place to get some more information about the possible problem.

You see, something wasn't quite right about one of my twin boys, the beans, nuts...well...plenty of names for them. My immediate thought was "cancer" because so little else ever happens with those things, at least not anything you hear too much about. And there was definitely something there, just didn't quite know what it was yet.

Well I'll relieve any of you holding your breath at this point by saying that the doctors ruled out cancer. Good news. Great news, really.

But of course, it naturally got me into thinking...what if? You know, I've not had any major medical issue in my life. I broke my wrist once in 5th grade, but that's the only other time outside of being born that I had to spend any extended amount of time in the care of a doctor.

But all of a sudden, I'm thinking that something could happen to me. And really, I guess I never figured anything could. Not that I've always felt "invincible," just that I didn't think I had a target on me.

For those of you just hearing about this little episode for the first time, particularly those who might have expected to hear something about it from me personally rather than an Internet posting...well, I guess it's just not a real comfortable thing to talk about in the first place. In the second, I didn't like that moment of mortality that I felt, and perhaps reliving that brief emotion is just a little more than I wanted to deal with at the time.

For a whole 3 days while we waited for the doctors to give a final assessment, I kept finding myself occasionally distracted by thoughts...what would I do? What could I do? How do I have time to deal with something like this? Thankfully, I'm not in a position to consider such questions now, but the main takeaway for me has been a little bit more compassion for the multitudes of people around me and elsewhere who have found something like this becoming a major part of their life.

Oh, and about the actual problem...well, the doctors didn't figure out exactly what it is, just what it isn't. They ran some (extremely uncomfortable) tests, but in the end they prescribed me some medication and said it would probably not be an issue. So far it has proven to be true. Very happy about that one.