The Clever Plan

I stayed up way too late last night watching the news out of West, Texas (not to be confused with West Texas -- this is a town, not a region, and to make things more confusing, West, Texas is not in West Texas). I turned on the TV to see the late news so I could get an update on the storms that were supposed to be heading our way, and instead found myself transfixed for a couple of hours by reports of a small town that's been mostly flattened. West is pretty much a mandatory stop on road trips between Dallas and Austin. It's a mostly Czech community, and the roadside gas stations are also kolache bakeries. I think their Dairy Queen is now closed, but it used to have a very Old World style to it, complete with lace curtains. It wasn't until midway through the news coverage that I realized this was probably why the lady in the choir who's a nurse in the major regional burn unit abruptly left the rehearsal. I  bet she got called in as soon as word of the explosion got out.

Appropriately, I will likely be spending much of the day listening to the Mozart Requiem, as it's been a while since I looked at it and there's a rehearsal tonight for the performance next weekend. For those in the North Texas area, the concert will be next Sunday night at 6:30 and proceeds benefit the Genesis Women's Shelter. Here's more info.

Meanwhile, I sent the book off to my agent yesterday, and now it's time to start brainstorming the sequel. I figure if it sells, it'll be nice to have the sequel ready to go, and if it doesn't, I'm planning to self-publish, and then having the sequel ready will be good.

We came up with a clever plan for dealing with the kids in choir, and it seems to have worked. The older kids do rotations among singing, instruments, guitar and art, so we're doing mini rotations and switching the kids between the preschool and kindergarten teachers for activities. The other teachers did handbells last night and we did a craft. Then the children's music director got interested and we did a singing rotation with her. There was so much coming and going that the kids barely had a chance to get crazy. I did have one moment of triumph/vindication, though. There's one girl who's been a bit of a behavior problem all year. She keeps doing things that she knows she's not supposed to do. For instance, there are stacks of chairs along the wall, and the kids are told every week to stay away from them, but she likes to crawl under them. Near the end of class, she was crawling under them, and I told her to stop that and get out. She laughed and stayed there, not knowing that her mother had arrived and was standing beside me. Busted! I resisted the urge to cackle with glee.