Some people call me Maurice

What a surreal day I had yesterday!

After coming home and falling into bed at 11:30 or so Saturday night (I was up in NY helping my brother with his Tisch audition material), I was awakened at 4 AM by Scratchy, who was meowing at the door wanting to be let out. Usually when he does this, I don't even remember his meows because I instinctively get up as soon as my subconscious registers it, but this time I kept dreaming about being in choir practice and having one person in the choir who just couldn't quite hit the note and was scooping up to it. After about three takes of the dream, I finally realized that this person sounded way too much like a cat meowing and, oh, yeah, I guess Scratchy wants to be let out.

A more portentous dream I could not have had.

The morning started out as a usual Sunday morning: the alarm went off, I hit snooze a couple times, and then finally rolled myself out of bed and into the shower so I could to church. I was still a little groggy from lack of sleep, so instead of wearing black tights that would have matched the black blouse I was wearing with my burgundy skirt, I pulled on a pair of dark brown tights. It wasn't until I was walking from my car to church that I looked down at my shoes and realized my mistake. Too late now, I figured. Of course, there was also a big run in one of the legs that clued me into the fact that I didn't have the mental capacity today to dress myself properly.

Church itself was pretty normal. We have a new assistant rector with abysmal writing skills, and I've recently taken to counting the number of times he repeats a word or a phrase within the sermon...today the word "life" came in first with a whopping 35 repetitions, with the word "priority" a far second with only 21. I think it wouldn't be so noticeable if he didn't use the exact same words in a different order to fill three sentences in succession. He's fond of phrases like, "We all prioritize things that matter in our life; in other words, things that matter in life get prioritized." Uh, did anyone point out to you that you're not using other words at all, but the SAME EXACT WORDS? I might forgive him his redundancy if he created a chiasmus with them (like The Sphinx in Mystery Men: "Learn to hide your strikes from your opponent and you'll more easily strike his hide"), but he's not nearly that clever.

After church, we had to sing in an evensong at another church in Asbury Park. It was several church choirs combined to sing at this one church -- they're hoping to make it an annual event, which by itself it not a bad idea, but they'd better put someone else in charge next time. The whole affair, from the rehearsals up to the concert itself, was infuriatingly disorganized. Asbury Park is on the Jersey Shore (some people recognize it as Bruce Springsteen's home town), but it's a good hour's drive away from our church in Moorestown. By the time we were done with the second service at church, I barely had enough time to scarf down a sandwich before all the section leaders piled into one car and headed out to the shore.

Asbury Park should be renamed as Ass-bury Park. That town is a real dump. The church is smack dab in the middle of a pretty bad neighborhood, and we all agreed if we never had to return it would be too soon. When we got there, the airhead in charge was unable to answer a lot of questions and had clearly not communicated what needed to be done in the rehearsal with the other church choir directors or with the clergy from her own church.

We were also dealing with the added bonus of children's choirs. Our children's choir managed to behave themselves, thanks to one of the moms who sat opposite them in the choir stalls and glared at them the whole time. But the other kids didn't have that type of oversight. One kid sat in the back and didn't even pretend to sing; another one didn't have any music because some of the other kids had stolen it. There were no parents anywhere; I assume they must have thought with 40+ adults around, there was plenty of supervision. Boy, were they wrong.

The concert itself went surprisingly well, with the exception of the tone-deaf priest who really wanted to cantor. He had been practicing all month, you see, and was really nervous about it. Too bad his chant didn't have any resemblance to the notes on the page at all, and our harmonized responses would have crashed and burned if it weren't for the quick-thinking organist, who played our chord before each response.

When the concert was over, I couldn't get out of there quicker. On my way home, I called Ray, who asked if I could stop and get some pizza for dinner. Pizza sounded good. And beer. Lots of beer. But when I got to the pizza place, they had an order ready for me under the name "Maurice." You have to be seriously not listening to an order if you hear "Maurice" from "Maren." Ray even spelled it for the dude. So I guess now you can call me the space cowboy or the gangster of love if you want...

What a perfect end to my wacky, crazy day.