Dying from Cute

I had a pretty good weekend, the first in more than a month that I've been moderately well, enough so to actually do much of anything. The fact that I feel so much improved when I'm still not 100 percent may say something about just how sick I was. I got together with friends on Saturday, then my children's choir sang Sunday morning. It was my kindergarteners combined with the preschoolers, and I was in charge (eep!). They reached off-the-charts levels of cute. It's a shame that the kid whose mom usually videos the performances and posts them on YouTube wasn't there because I would have loved to have a recording of this. Part of the cute was that this year's preschoolers are really tiny, so they were swimming in even the smallest choir robes and doing that cute thing where they flap their arms inside the robes so the sleeves swish around. Part of the cute was that the song had a nice swingy beat and some of the kids were bopping and swaying around. Some of that may have been influenced by their director a wee bit. In the chorus, there's a bit that repeats, with one part different each time, and they tend to get that mixed up. So before the pianist was there, I was singing that part for them to get it in their heads, and because they remember things better if you make it fun, I was doing my best Ella Fitzgerald and singing this song like I was the vocalist with a big band. And they sort of picked up on it, so we had a nice jazz choir effect going on, which was just adorable when they were swaying in those robes (and they remembered the words, so it worked). Plus, we had a lot of, "Hey, there's my mom!" stuff going on where they'd get sidetracked in the middle of the song when they saw their parents and then they'd wave. I was seriously dying from the cute.

Then I managed to sing with the adult choir in the service for the first time in ages. I got through an entire song without a coughing fit, and I even managed to walk and sing at the same time for the processional and recessional. I will have to have a word with the second-row sopranos, though, because my kindergarten girls were scandalized by the amount of stuff they found on the floor under their seats in the choir room. I barely kept a straight face as they were earnestly telling me that I needed to do something about that. Then in the afternoon, there was a neighborhood block party at the pool, and it was one of those perfect Texas October days, the ideal comfortable outdoor temperature and clear skies. It was nice sitting out on the deck, having hot dogs and all sorts of other goodies, and chatting with my neighbors. I finally got to know one of my next-door neighbors that I've never really talked to. However, it now appears that it may be added to the HOA bylaws that I'm required to bring chocolate chip cookies to all neighborhood gatherings.

One big topic of conversation was the chimney sweeping that was done last week. I must say, they totally shattered all my illusions. No top hat and tails, just shorts and t-shirts. They inspected the chimney from inside the fireplace and didn't even get on my roof, so there was absolutely no dancing around the chimney pots (though my roof is so steeply slanted that dancing would be difficult). My chimney was fine, but my dryer vent was a mess that had to be cleaned. The laundry room isn't on an exterior wall, so the vent goes through the living room ceiling, and it takes special equipment to clean it. All the neighbors were talking about how much gunk came out of those vents. I had a bird nest about six feet into mine. I'm going to have to find a way to block off access to that vent.

Is it a sign that you're a boring adult when you hang out with your neighbors, talking about home repairs? I'll make up for it today by spending the day revising my book. That's not normal boring adult stuff.