Today was the choir’s last performance before its summer hiatus. {sigh}
Everyone else, I expect, is happy for a break—especially the paid staff, who take the term “hard-working” to a whole new level of meaning. But I’ll miss it. When you don’t have much of a life, you tend to get invested in an activity that brings you together with a bunch of nice people.
I really will miss the superb voices of the professionals and near-professionals who form the chamber choir. They sing each Sunday during communion. It was this incredible music that drew me to the church: attending a service there is like going to a chamber music concert. Every week. All through the fall, winter, and spring.
We had a great party this afternoon, wherein the James Beard potatoes au gratin knockoff was a humble entry among some truly awesome dishes. One couple occasionally brings salmon smoked in their own cooker—it is invariably splendid. Everything was good; one broccoli salad was just delicious, and I don’t even like broccoli! And some of those people are dessert artists.
Many of them leave town for the summer, since they own vacation homes or they live somewhere else and spend the winters here. Almost all are gone for at least a week or two. But I expect some of them will show up at the regular Sunday services. I suppose if I would get myself in gear on Sundays, I could reconnect with them there over the summer.
I’m not very churchly myself. But the director said we could sit in the choir loft, if we chose, during the summer services. That would work: first because I enjoy watching the organist as she plays, and second because it’s amazing to be close to the various musicians who come in to perform. And third, because it makes it easy for me to evade going down to the communion rail. I’m superstitiously averse to drinking out of a communal chalice, and I do not believe for a moment that dipping the host in the wine is one whit more sanitary than sipping shared wine.
Really, I don’t fare well with colds or the flu—almost died from one case of influenza, and recovery takes about twice as long as it does for most people—and so I don’t do things that put me at risk. As adjunct faculty, I get no sick leave; the college docks your pay if you don’t show up, and I can’t afford to lose even one day’s shekels, much less a whole week’s worth. And when you live alone, getting sick can be difficult, because there’s no one to help you or to get you something to eat when you can’t drag yourself into the kitchen.
So that’s my excuse. 😉
Welp, it’s gunna be a long, hot summer, financially very scary. I have no idea when or how the college will pay for the online course prep and so can’t rely on that income to cover bills. While the Copyeditor’s Desk holds some funds that could cover a shortfall, I want to keep that money in the bank in case I need it this fall. There’s no guarantee that either of the eight-week courses slated for fall semester will make. If either fails to make, it’ll be a nuisance; if they’re both canceled, I’ll need every penny the S-corporation can disgorge to make ends meet. At the moment, though, it does contain enough to carry me through the fall semester, and then some. I just don’t want to diddle it away over the summer.
The aftermath of the mad shopping spree, the dental bill, and the glasses comes due with this month’s AMEX bill, speaking of diddling money away. However, it appears that diddle-it-away savings will cover those extravaganzas. So I’m pretty certain the overage collected during the cool winter months, when I didn’t have to run either the heat or the water, will carry me through the summer.
I may need some divine intervention, though. It could be worth visiting the church now and again.
Image: pgnielsen79, Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Wikipedia Commons. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.