Day 9. A Christmas Hymn

Warning! Do Not Read if you go to church with me and are easily offended!  I am serious!

I mean it, I’ll wait, log in to pinterest or something, go on.

I am warning you, snarkiness ensues if you keep reading.

Ok, just those of you hoping for something scandalous are left?  Typical.

It isn’t so much a scandal as it just gave me the church giggles so bad.  We have a very poised and professional husband and wife music team leading the musical worship at my church.  Every Sunday we sing new and improved versions of the traditional hymns.  Lucky us.

On November 30^th, the first Sunday of advent our church had a big Christmas music program that evening.  Not only does this kick off the advent season in style it has the wholly unintended benefit of freeing up the schedule of the music staff so that they can attend to things much more important during the holiday season.  (A very funny sentence was here, hilarious really, but Kat edited it out.  I ironically used the word y’all and Texas in the same sentence, but Kat says the rest of it was too mean and I listened to her) 

ANYWAY, before I get sidetracked, now that the big music program is over they are not having choir practice again until January.  This basically says to me that they are winging it on Sunday mornings.  This Sunday morning after the choir opened the service with a Christmas hymn it was time to light the advent candles.  The professional pianist played the march of the sugarplum fairies as a church family ascended the stairs and lit the candles and then returned to their seats.  Someone sitting next to me leaned over and asked, “is that the oompa-loompa song?” Then the only thing I could see as this family lit the candle of peace was oompa-loompas climbing up stairs.  SO Wrong!

Then it was time for the congregation to sing.  This was a very special arrangement of a very familiar Christmas hymn.  This arrangement had excerpts from the nutcracker between each verse. (No! Do NOT engage me in a discussion of why the nutcracker music was included in a church service. Nooooooo!)  It could have been borne except the music leader brought the congregation back in to sing the second verse before the pianist, (who was using a keyboard to make it sound like a harpsichord) was finished with the special interlude.  The organist tried to come back in with the melody but the pianist kept going and we got halfway into the verse before the music leader had to stop everyone.

She started us over, from the beginning.  Really it was the only thing to do, except that it gave me the church giggles. Well, not really giggles, more like loud chuckles that I could not suppress.  Then my Paul got up from his seat in the balcony and walked over to me to whisper, ‘that was the BEST part of this morning’s church!’  Then I really couldn’t stop laughing.

I just managed to get composed when someone sitting in the balcony with us asked loudly, “Why can’t we just sing it the regular way?” That was it, I was done.

There really is a reason I sit in the balcony, and it just might be that I am not allowed to sit with the grownups yet.

Do me a favor? Sing a Christmas hymn for me!

Day 5. All I Want for Christmas is...

How do you tell your mother in law that you and her daughter broke the bed in their guest room?  What is a good way to explain that?  How do you even start?

Of all of the embarrassing experiences I have had, I never thought that I would find myself having to admit to breaking a bed at my in-laws house in the middle of the night.  No matter how I try to explain it, it just comes out bad.  Stop smirking.

Since moving back to Oklahoma we have been living with my in-laws while we got jobs and found a new place to live.  Kathleen and I have been sleeping in the guest room on a futon couch that converts to a bed.  The futon is old, Kat’s parents had it in CA before they moved out here in 2003.  I am guessing it is at least 15 years old.  Does this sound like I am trying to justify the damage?

Not Our Bed, Just a Dramatic Image for Emphasis

There is a long version of this story that involves slight damage noticed a week ago, but the short and sweet version is that the bed is broken and Tuesday night at midnight I found myself rolling out of a broken bed no matter how I tried to adjust myself.  When faced between sleeping on a bed that was surely going to roll me out onto the floor and sleeping on the floor, Kat and I chose the floor.  Except that the guest room is kind of small, and in order to put the mattress on the floor we needed to move the frame.  So at midnight I was waking up Matthew and getting him to come upstairs to help me move this bed frame downstairs.  I tried to explain that the frame was old, and that it seemed a screw or two was missing, but he just rolled his eyes and said, “don’t tell me, I don’t need to know.” Stop smirking, I say!

We tried to be quiet about the whole thing, but eventually we woke up my mother in law who stuck her head out of her bedroom to see what was going on. When the explanation starts with “We weren’t doing anything …” well it just sounds suspicious.

I promise we weren’t trying to sneak the broken frame downstairs; I just wanted to avoid waking up my in-laws.  I swear.

My VERY good friend Scott is coming by Saturday to help me move my bed from storage into our room.  It is like a Christmas Miracle come early!