BOOOOO!  No break, please.  But I suppose my vocal coach and her family is entitled to some fun over the summer.  I can take this time to scour my books and find more and More and MORE! music to work on… no worries, I won’t kill myself just get some more songs that appeal to me.  Kathrine has offered to make some copies of Conductor pieces, but I still cannot find a copy of “Thuy’s Death/You Will Not Touch Him” a powerful, dramatic duet from Miss Saigon.

I have already copied some music from a few Lloyd Webber shows, some of my favorite Alan Menken/Howard Ashman Disney character pieces, and a few more duets.  I have had a few people state an interest in singing a duet with me so I’m doing my best to find some.  I have a serious one to work on with another tangenteer… wherever she is.  YOOHOO!  Plus, I am still continuing my preparation for Hound of the Baskervilles.  Why does it seem to me that most guys grow a beard in the winter?  I’m one of the few who grow one in the summer in the 90+ degree, humid weather… ah, well such is the life of a performer.  You would have thought my time Fiddling on that Roof 8 years ago would have made me leary of growing another beard, but Oh, No… not me… whatever the role calls for, I will do!  Even before the audition 😉

Ooook… so two weeks off. 🙁 Still thinking a weekend gig would be fun with some friends joining me.  Come on tangenteers!

In preparation for what I hope is my next stage performance, I was informed that the role had to have a full beard…. the “handsome” part?  Well… the say beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  More than a few summers ago, I was cast as Motel in Fiddler on the Roof.  Of course, the tailor had to grow facial hair as well.  Nothing new, it will just be a bit warm under there once again.  Of course, a Holmes play requires the cast to have English accents, or no go.  It would be very odd having a cast with American accents.  Maybe I could give a Liswathistani interpretation of the character.  A non-Jewish Fiddler would be strange for that matter.

Today, my mother had had enough.  I previously had an electric trimmer but after 8-10 years, it seemed to have died out.  So, she took me to the beauty shop to help it along.  She was worried that she would make a booboo, but I thought there is plenty of time to grow it back.  I think it only took a little over a month for the beard to develop on my last attempt; it has only been about a month since I started this one. I started the day after Miracles wrapped.  Nothing like preparing for future parts. Plus, I got a hair cut, such as it is. 😉  The script says nothing about a full head of hair. 😀

Over the past few weeks, I have been blessed to become re-acquainted with someone who used to teach at the local elementary school.  She has since moved to North Carolina.  She started commenting on my blog during the worst couple of weeks I have had in my 35 years when Emily became seriously ill and lost her battle with leukemia.  I helped Terri and Emily direct the high school’s production of Bye, Bye Birdie a few years ago.  I am extremely sad to say that the theatrical tradition that was once so strong at my alma mater has disappeared.  Growing up I remember watching great musicals performed on the gymnasium stage.  The first being The Wizard of Oz in 1977.  I was introduced to my favorite musical, Carousel, in the early 80s, as well as Finian’s Rainbow, You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown (which justj‘s daughter will be part of in her high school’s production next Spring).  I also watched both of my brothers on stage.  THEN, I guess I made my mark in Fiddler on the Roof, I Remember Mama, and (finally) as Rooster in Annie.  I also helped stage The Sound of Music, South Pacific, and the aforementioned Birdie.  Do any of my faithful readers have any memories of school musical productions they would like to share?

Terri recently sent this holiday greeting which features my favorite version of my favorite carol set to a beautiful scene which signifies the true meaning of the season.

This will be our final song to you before Christmas, which truly symbolizes our belief of the true meaning of Christmas.

https://youtube.com/embed/Z_ypUnnqr8Y

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL!

I had my ultrasound yesterday, and something occured that has left me in shock; that’s why it took me a day to blog about it…

My doctor is a female who has 3 sons.  Actually, 2 of her sons are the exact same age as 2 of my daughters, because our dr. was 9 months pregnant when she delivered my 4-year-old, and she was on maternity leave when her replacement doctor delivered my 19-month-old.  But anyway, during my ultrasound yesterday, she was talking about how her other dr. friend came to visit over the weekend, and he has 4 daughters.  He was wistfully throwing around a football with her sons and she was talking about how into sports girls are in this area, trying to console her friend because he didn’t have boys.  She was telling this story because we have 3 daughters and one on the way, and my husband is starting to feel like the character Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof who is famous for having 5 daughters.  So anyway, the dr. gets to the point in the story where she’s talking about lots of girls in our area being active in sports.  All of a sudden, she kind of pauses, then she goes, “wait a minute…  what’s this?”  Seems the ultrasound had picked up a certain little “bleep” on the radar that hadn’t appeared on the February ultrasound…  Seems our little Lyndsey or Evangeline is going to be Christopher Vincent instead!!!

It’s especially funny because my dr. has a reputation in the area for being wrong about these kinds of things.  I’ve heard stories of at least 5  of her patients’ babies whose gender was predicted wrong; inlcuding one from the delivery room nurse I had when I delivered my second daughter.  I am glad this “misdiagnosis” happened now rather than at birth, otherwise our firstborn son would be going home in pink – after 3 girls, pink and purple onsies are all I have!  And in the past 24 hours since I found out, I’ve been looking around the house, noting how easily and unnoticeably we’ve emersed ourselves in pinks and purples over the years.  We have pink blankies, bedsheets, clothes, stuffed animals, doll’s clothes, furniture, carpet, curtains, pillows…  the list goes on and on and on.

We are ecstatic; we’ve never had a little boy in our house, so it should be interesting to say the least.  And my greatest wish of course is for a healthy baby anyway, gender is not a concern.  But now that we know he’s a boy, I do feel kind of lost.  I’ve never had a boy baby before, and I had gotten into a sort-of comfort zone with my girls…  I even had a nice system worked out with their clothes.  The clothes that my 19-month-old was growing out of weren’t even getting packed away in the basement – I was just keeping them around for the new baby to use!  My girls are close enough in age where I was just putting all their clothes in one closet, and they would make the transition to the next size seamlessly – I thought I had it all figured out!  The good news about the clothes is that my sister has gratiously offered us the use of her boys’ clothes.  She has a baby who will be 2½ months older than baby Christopher, so if we can keep the transportation line open between her home in Illinois and mine in Ohio, we shouldn’t have to put our baby boy into any pinks or purples.

And that reminds me…  I got my husband to promise me (somehow, we have both forgotten how!) somewhere between the last 2 baby girls that if we were to ever have a baby boy, I would get to name him Christopher after my husband.  Now that it’s a reality, he is getting cold feet about the name, but I am not letting him out of this one!  People have suggested using Christopher as a middle name, but Vincent was decided upon way back in 1999 when my husband’s father fell ill and passed away – I was pregnant with our first child when he was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), and we agreed that when we had a boy, he’d have the name Vincent…  little did we know it would be 9 years later!

So anyway, I just wanted to share our happy news with everybody…  Doctors can be wrong, and it seems our family is the latest victim of our doctor’s reputable gender inconsistencies.  And here is the poll we took way back when in February (before our first “gender revealing” ultrasound – or so we thought!) of some of our family and friends’ predictions.  It was just for fun, no prizes or anything, but the people who thought they were right really were not (including our whole family except Taylor – good job, T!), and vice versa!

 Gender Prediction – Feb. 2008

GUESSES:
Mommy – g
Daddy – g
Taylor – b
Sammie – g
Mary Beth – b
Great Grandma and Great Pa – b
Shirley – g
Keith and Trudy – g
Linda – b
Jamy – b
John – b
Elizabeth – b
Jenny – g
Tracy – g
Gerry – g
Tim and Kim – g
Austin – b
Sharon – b
Lilly – b
Vickie – g
Kristen – g
Sue – b
Megan – b
Carol – b
Grandma B – g
Cathy – b

12 guesses for girl – 14 guesses for boy

FEB 11, 2008 – ULTRASOUND / DR. says IT’S A GIRL!!!
JUNE 3, 2008 – ULTRASOUND / DR. says IT’S A BOY!!!

Yep, that is me. I’ve probably done five and will be doing my sixth on March 29th. The first was for my cousin about 10 years ago. I sang at my 2 brother’s weddings (one of which is divorced) and my sister’s (who is separated (wow…. scary thought only 1 out of three is still married). Then I sang for another cousin’s ceremony. Last night, the organist and I met to go over what I am expected to sing on the 29th. Most of the songs I have done before… more or less traditional wedding songs (The Rose, Sunrise Sunset, One Hand One Heart, and Theme from Ice Castles (Through the Eyes of Love). When I saw the list, I asked the organist why we were singing so few. We will need to add at least one to the Pre-ceremony list; there were two and I have been known to have as many as five. We must be going to rush those guests into the church in a hurry. Even with the organist playing between the two songs, it would take no more than 10 minutes to get through it all.

As for the songs themselves, I have sung “The Rose” during at least 3 weddings. I have been in two different productions of Fiddler on the Roof, so “Sunrise Sunset” is familiar (but at a Catholic wedding seems strange). “One Hand One Heart” from West Side Story is about as traditional as “The Bridal March.” The Ice Castles theme is probably the most unfamiliar to me but I have been to enough weddings to have heard the piece more than once. I have always wanted to do “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” but maybe for my own. At least they are all in English.