Weekend Highlights

I decide to get my Christmas shopping done early on Friday afternoon. I make my way through the bleak spitting cold to Pike Place to see if the guy who makes the beautiful candles is there this year. He is not. There are rows of bright fruit like jewels made out of water. They seem to be lit from within, emitting some kind of powerful, clean energy. There is a man singing French Christmas carols without any accompaniment. He breaks my heart and I give him a dollar. Then this tall old guy with a white beard harmonizes with him in a reedy tenor. They sound like cartoon animals and it's cute and funny. I go downstairs to get a bowl of my favorite chili, but there's a sign on the window that says they've all gone to a funeral. I start to head back toward downtown and hear this massive bang. I turn around and see that a car has run into a bus. Nobody seems to be injured.

Later that night, I'm singing the concert and everything goes fine. Then halfway through "Les filles de Cadix," my dress starts to slip off. I'm wearing a shawl (which would not do my bidding at key moments, e.g. falling off my shoulders at the end of Gretchen), so there's no Janet Jackson moment, but it is distracting. It's the castanets; you have to move your arms around to keep them loose, which is the problem.

The next night at the office Christmas party, unbelievably, I score a power drill in the gift exchange. My cheerful boss' grumpy (but well meaning) husband shows me how to change the bit and clip on the battery. He is impatient and I don't like performing mechanical tasks in front of other people. I tell him I'm glad he's not teaching me how to drive a stick shift.

The next morning, Jasmine and I drive very very slowly over the black ice to church, where I must sing to pay back for using the place for the concert. All is crisp and crunchy and the sun is out. In the middle of Ave Maria (Schubert), I have the bizarre sense that my hands are enormous- I am clasping them loosely, and they feel like they extend all the way down to the floor. I am concentrating on remembering the words, but cannot help but enjoy this strange, trippy feeling. I wonder if I've suddenly turned into some kind of synesthete, or if god is talking to me this way. Every time I get up to sing, this adorable woman with curly black hair and eyes like jet beads starts to bawl. I stare out the window and resist the urge to cry with her.