On remembering to enjoy the craziest week of the year: Part I

Most people I know think that the time leading up to Christmas is the craziest time of year. It's a time to buy people presents, sing songs, watch special movies, spend time with family and maybe fit in a church service too, depending on the individual. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, the only stress I am sure to feel is from my music director who extends our practices an extra half an hour, hangs her head after a choir member innocently hits a note too flat and makes us try to same annoying song again, for the thousandth time.

For many Germans, the week preceeding lent is the craziest time of year. In fact, the German term for it is the crazy days. People wear costumes, get really drunk, and pull crazy pranks on each other. Although I have yet to experience this time of year in Germany first hand, I believe that it's crazy.

And for me? This is the craziest week of the year, period. I sing at four church services, have two rehearsals, have to make time for my inlaws while completing my normal work week. This is fine, except that it's never a "normal" week leading up to Easter. So far, the week is going as expected.

I had an early morning rehearsal with my music director on Monday. The only thing unusual about it was that it took place right before a funeral started. Usually we rehearse in my director's office, but as she unexpectedly had to play at a funeral on Monday, we met at the parish instead. I arrived before my music director to find a church full of loud Italians standing around a corpse-filled coffin. It seemed that it was more interesting to talk about anything but the elderly lady who was peacefully laying in the middle of the church. Meanwhile I searched for my director and returned the parish's cross necklace I accidently walked out of church still wearing on Sunday (I used to accidently steal hymnals but as those have been replaced with paper booklets, that doesn't happen anymore). I found my director and recognised that the previous 10 minutes would have been really weird anywhere else, but somehow they weren't weird because I was at church during Holy Week and where everything is fair game.

In my office, I finished making tables/charts from Geraldine's database. Then I spent an hour double checking fonts, font sizes and borders for uniform consistency throughout my files. It felt like it took forever to look though all of my charts. I made over 40. Relieved to be done, I sent copies to Indiana and Dumbledore. Dumbledore likes my work, but Indiana has yet to reply.

Then I left the office and headed back to church for another music rehearsal, only this time it was with the choir and three instrumentalists. In my four years' of singing for Holy Week at this parish, this was the fastest and easiest Monday night rehearsal ever. There was no yelling, no batons flying out of hands, no ugly notes... everything went smoothly and quickly ended in the regular "there's nothing else to do but enter the mystery of Holy Week... so start praying and show up on time...." pep talk that ends this rehearsal and my two day break from a split personality assignment started.