Requiem

This weekend was busy. I had three choir concerts and a rehearsal. The choir I currently sing in just preformed Mozart's Requiem. I hadn't ever sung the Requiem, so this was a fun learning experience for me. Although our choir did not sound terrific on every single note, we greatly enjoyed creating some beautiful sounds. I was particularly excited to sing in a quartet featured in one of the movements of the requiem. It is actually my favorite movement, and not because my quartet was singing it. I think the Benedictus is a beautiful piece of music with great potential for phrasing. The voices weave in and out of one another and through the instruments of the orchestra. Interestingly enough, Mozart did not write a great deal of his own Requiem (due to the fact that he died first) and he didn't write any of the Benedictus, which in my opinion is probably the greatest treasure of the whole work.

During such an intense musical weekend it was fun to get to know some of the other people in the choir. There are several younger altos that joined the choir this spring: a third grade teacher who is sprite, bright, kind and quiet, yet somewhat nervous constantly. I really like her. There is also a physcian's assistant who is very down to earth and friendly, and happens to get nervous when her friend's five year old daughter comes over to her house and checks under her couch for cobwebs. (This would unnerve me as well). There is the friendly lactation consultant who I conversed with at length regarding infant nutrition, baby buggies in Norway (her daughter teaches Montessori in Norway and is about to have her first baby). There was the lawyer who has two sons who play string bass in elementary school orchestra and who was looking at getting a new car but needed to make sure it would transport two very large stringed instruments. There was the overzealous nearly elderly lady with an obtrusively loud voice who just brought an abused dog into her home and couldn't help worrying about it causing mayhem and destruction while she was away, even though she hired a babysitter to watch the dog during the concerts. People are such interesting creatures.

Poem of the Day

I'm taking a free online poetry class, and this is the poem I wrote this morning, posted with very minimal revision. The prompt or assignment was to write about striking a board.

Sick of Laundry--1933

Hot water stings her hands
knuckles rubbed raw, almost bloody
on the metal washboard’s galvanized grooves

baby socks, faded blue work shirts,
threadbare overalls, pant legs caked with dried manure from the barn
rubbed with cakes of murky soap,
scraped against the ridges of the board,
they disappear into the grey water of the tub
fabric worn thin

Cramps in her arms, back bent over
feet shuffle across dead, brown grass


Wooden clothespins, their mouths filled with dripping material
dot a single clothesline sagging from the house to
a stick of an apple tree bent under the weight

Dust coats bed sheets in a gale of prairie wind
turning crisp whiteness into dingy brown

Why bother?
She’d like to smash the clothes basket, splinters
of wicker flying across the scorched garden
but there’s no money for a new one
so instead
even though there’s no one but God to hear,
she slams the board and hollers “No more!”

Noah--After a Small Snack

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Originally uploaded by super rachel zana.

Princess Sarah

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Originally uploaded by super rachel zana.

Fabric Rocks

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Originally uploaded by super rachel zana.

This morning I traversed over to the home of another mother from my church. We had volunteered to work together to recreate the tomb Jesus resurrected from for the preschool Easter party at my church. Our plan was to dye a slough of sheets from the local thrift store to look like rocks, and cover a large tent with the sheets so the kids can open the stone doorway and go inside to look for Jesus. Today we dyed the sheets. We bound them with rubber bands and dipped the tufts into black and brown dye, and then hung the sheets out on the clothesline to dry. It took four hours, because the job was interrupted by two babies who needed to be fed and four preschoolers who needed to eat their lunch (maccaroni and cheese). We also spent another hour and a half cleaning up the mess the four preschoolers created in the playroom while we were up to our elbows in dye. It was glorious fun. I do love to make messes. Now I just have to wait for my hands to return to their normal color.

Coughs

Noah is sick. He has the worst cough I have ever had to listen to. It is six times louder than his body is big, and over the last five days he has lost his voice from coughing, which transforms his crying and his coughing into an indescribable grating noise that makes you want to find the largest, fluffiest pair of ear muffs, run across the yard, dive into a snowbank and stay there for the next two weeks. In fact, hearing these scraping cries makes you ponder running across the yard and diving into the snow bank in your bare feet. To be more candid, you might even consider diving into the snowbank in a bikini, even though you do not have a bikini figure (childbirth does take its toll). I keep consoling myself that I just have to hang in there a few more days. How much longer can a wracking cough last?

Earwax

I clean my ears daily. Sometimes I clean my ears twice daily. I vowed long ago never to become like my disgusting biology teacher who informed his eleventh grade science class that to avoid damaging his ears with a Q-tip, he simply didn't use one. When he went to the doctor, the physcian scraped out the packed wax with a small shovel. Earwax disgusts me. Ear wax itches. I'll take my chances with a Q tip. The other alternative, setting a cone of paper on fire and holding it in your ear to draw out the wax, which certain people I know claim is the only safe way to clean your ears, does not appeal to me either. In fact, it seems far more dangerous than a simple little Q tip. Earwax in my children's ears also drives me crazy, but I have refrained from doing anything about it so far on the advice of several pediatricians that I personally know.

Do Not Disturb

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Originally uploaded by super rachel zana.

I had fun photographing Sarah while she played with the city on her bedroom floor last weekend. She has become quite the camera ham lately. This is her "Do Not Disturb" Face. I liked all the bright colors in this picture.