Caught in the work squeeze again and it’s getting me down. Even the free Fridays are only sorta kinda helping. Urgh.
We’ve made a ton of progress on the bedroom renovation and are moving back in officially tonight, though it’s not 100% finished. Anders took last Thursday and Friday off and spent both days painting. On Saturday we went shopping and picked out a ceiling fan that works better with the decor than the previous one did (which is being moved to the living room).
I spent a great deal of time putting dresser drawers together and we finished assembling the night stands and the big dresser over the weekend but found out that one of the side pieces for my dresser had been incorrectly included. We were supposed to have two side pieces that mirrored each other but instead we got two exactly the same. And of course their customer support was closed during the weekend so we couldn’t do more than file a claim online and wait for them to get back to us on Monday. They are delivering an entire new dresser this coming Saturday (between 9 and 5…sigh), which is a little aggravating because we only need the one piece and I had already assembled all the drawers. So now we have to take them apart again, and try to figure out how to repack the dresser pieces in the boxes. GAH.
Photos will have to wait until after we get that last piece of furniture this coming weekend, but I am slowly putting things back in place as well. We hung paintings last night and the bed is now together and made and ready for sleeping in, yay! We still have to hang the curtain rods and put the new curtains up, too. But it looks really great already!
On Friday, after he was done with the second coat of paint (which ended up being a nice medium steel grey, by the way), Anders and I were sitting in the living room and he said, “You know, I have all this spackle and microlite and paint…seems a shame to let it just dry up. Maybe I should re-do the walk-in closet, too.” I just laughed and told him to go for it, if he really wanted to. So now we also have to clear out stuff in the closet and empty it so he can start in there as well! I guess we’ll strike while the renovating iron is hot!
I skipped choir tonight because I just wasn’t in the mood, and because I really wanted to work on putting the bedroom back together. I have very mixed feelings about this choir, and suspect that I won’t continue with it after this term ends in December. I am really happy to be singing again but the format is a struggle and I have issues with the choir leader, plus the songs we’ve been working on are, with one exception, awful. I’m sorry, but I despise I’m So Excited and having to do arm and hand motions to it just feels completely ridiculous. We have 2 Christmas songs as well, and while one of them is fine, the other is a terrible tune by Bryan Adams (sorry, Bryan, but gah), with banal lyrics and a boring, repetitive melody and a GLARING grammatical error that causes me to cringe every time we sing it. I approached our choir leader after we got it, and pointed out the mistake in the text we were given, which is NOT how the original lyrics go, and asked if we couldn’t correct it and she said no, that’s how it is supposed to be.
The original lyrics of the refrain in question:
To see the joy in the children’s eyes
The way that the old folks smile
Says that Christmas will never go away
BUT the version we’ve got has two mistakes in the last line. So, we’re singing, “…say that Christmas never go away.” Which sets my teeth on edge.
The choir I’m in is part of the national Joyvoice choir program which has branches all over the country. It’s an extremely popular “anyone can sing” format. You don’t have to read music, in fact you don’t even GET music. They use an app and recordings of the music and parts for you to memorize, with the song lyrics available if you also want to print them out or read them. I was flabbergasted to hear how many people are in them. Two of my colleagues were in the one in Lomma and said they had around 200 people. The one I joined, in Lund, has around 75 regulars, and the leader said there were actually about 140 who had signed up and paid. Mostly women, of course, but lots of men as well.
Considering that the little choir I was in a year and half ago, in Eslöv, which had a similar format (no reading music, just memorizing), really struggled to get even 15 regular members, I was amazed. It’s quite different though, being part of such a large choir. I am used to feeling like my voice and singing skills make a difference in the choir I am in, and in a group this large, they don’t. It makes me feel voiceless…which, how ironic. I’ve been singing in choirs on and off since I was 13 years old, and this one is the least enjoyable for the reasons I’ve mentioned. The choir leader’s manner also grates on me a bit, though I could live with that, if I liked the music she was choosing better. The registration fee was quite hefty, so I’ll stick it out through this term, but then we’ll see. There must be other smaller choirs around Lund that might fit me better, that aren’t church choirs.