Tonight's choir rehearsal was amazing. We have a concert coming up in less than 2 weeks, and some of the pieces we're doing are very powerful. The best moment of the night was when one of our sopranos sang a phenomenal solo high b. We all had to stop singing while we picked our jaws up off the floor. I'm very excited for this concert, if only to watch the audience members' faces when they hear that note too.

In other news, I have become the choir's unofficial ambassador for hearing health. I guess it's a hazard of my soon-to-be profession, coupled with the fact that I have to do many hours of hearing screenings in order to be certified (thank goodness I'm not studying to be a sexual health educator!). I'll be offering hearing screenings to my fellow choir members, and offering hearing protection tips. Unfortunately, I don't always practice what I preach. For example, I don't wear earplugs when I go out dancing, and I still use q-tips to clean my ears. In my defense, I practice safer q-tipping by keeping my elbow tucked close to my body -- I have never forgotten the time one of my high school teachers ruptured her eardrum with a q-tip when she banged her elbow. *shudder*

What's my point here?

Come out to my concert. Your ears will thank you for it, I promise.

If you can't see the light ahead, back out of the tunnel

Whew. The decision is made, and now I can type it loud and clear. I've changed 'tracks' on my degree, and I've dropped the thesis portion of my masters.

It's bittersweet, and I feel slightly sheepish, but I am mostly relieved. As I chatted with wise friends and faculty, the main message I got was that the decision didn't affect anyone but me. I had to choose what I thought was best, and no one else would really be impacted one way or the other. That was nice to hear. Now I feel as though a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

Whew. Barring unforeseen events, I will be finished no later than December of this year. It's later than I would have finished if I had figured this situation out last summer, but I can live with that. I can definitely live with that.

On the fence

So I'm on the verge of making a big decision. No, I'm not deciding to have a baby, or get my hair cut (although both are monumental decisions). I'm making a decision about school. That's all I'll say specifically about that. I have always had the sense that if you say too much about what you're trying to decide, your decision will be influenced by hearing the words come out of your own mouth too many times.

A weak and somewhat irrelevant analogy for this phenomenon involves my experience with high school crushes. When I was a teenager, I would approach crushes very tentatively. If I started feeling crushy towards a boy, I would mull it over for a while. I had to decide whether or not I wanted to have the crush become reality, because I knew that as soon as I started to tell my friends about it, the crush would take on a life of its own. Because I'm the kind of person that I am, I would inevitably tell people about my crush, for better or for worse. And then I would HAVE A CRUSH ON THAT BOY whether I liked it or not. Again, maybe it's just a quirk of my personality, but I tend to start to believe what other people say about me, so the crushes often went on for a long time, especially if other people were talking about them. That's just the way that sort of thing worked back then. Plus it's how I ended up with my husband, but that's a story for another day.

Here's the tie-in. I'm still totally on the fence with my current decision. I try to look down the road given choice A, and it looks pretty good. I can see myself on that road. Ditto with choice B. They both look really good. SO what happens if I start telling people about my choices? I might start to be swayed in one direction or the other by the words coming out of my mouth, or if other people hear me say them --

What? I'm not making any sense? Fine. I know. I've been thinking in circles lately. Decisions are hard to make. The last hard decision that I made was when Daniel and I got stuck in Vancouver with a blown transmission in our car. There were lots of problems, few solutions, and thousands of dollars to consider. Right now doesn't feel too different. Except that I'm the only person who is really affected by the decision, and I'm the one who has to make it. It hurts my brain.

One theory that's starting to shape my decision involves questions that come up again and again. I've been at this crossroad quite a few times before. I've made the choice I thought was best at the time, and went on my way. But the same question keeps coming up, again and again. Could it be that I've made the wrong choice again and again, and I'm finally getting my last chance to make the right decision? I think that may be the case.

I'll stop talking now. I can't help rambling about it. After I make my decision, I'll tell lots of other people that I made the right decision. Hopefully the more I say it, the more I'll believe it.

When too much is more than enough

I can't believe there is still chocolate from Christmas left in my house. And fruitcake. And fudge. And some cookies. And Pringles.

It just won't go away, even though Daniel seems to exist solely on chocolate and perogies. He eats an entire tray of Toffifee in one sitting, between bites of perogy. Then he moves on to the Ferrero Rocher. And there is still chocolate everywhere I turn. It must be multiplying in a dark corner of my kitchen cupboards. Scary.

So I've bought out the Safeway produce section a couple of times in the last couple of weeks to try to atone for my bad holiday eating habits. It's good for me, because I really like spinach salads with red peppers and tomatoes and mushrooms and cottage cheese and chickpeas. I'm feeling pretty healthy. Daniel, on the other hand, only eats food that can be boiled and subsequently fried (perogies, sausages), or eaten straight from the package (bagels, chocolates).

Now, occasionally I feel a bit guilty that I don't make big 'healthy' balanced meals for my husband. I don't let that guilt spur me into cooking too often, because I know that Daniel is taken out to steak lunches and all-you-can-eat buffets with the boys from work quite often.

When it does get to me, I simply pour a can of "cream of " soup over some pork chops and boil some brussels sprouts. Mmm. Gotta love home cooking.

Babies and puppies and kittens, oh my!

Just home from family holiday times in S'katchen. It was good. We are no longer complete strangers to our two youngest nephews, and we saw lots of Daniel's family, as well as all of my grandparents.

The little nephews are extremely adorable. I am very excited to live nearer to family so I can hold other people's babies more often, and stave off my own maternal longings for just a while longer. To that end, Daniel and I drove up and down the streets of MJ doing some house-hunting.

I am back to work on school stuff, hoping and praying for leaps and bounds of progress to occur over the next few days. (I think I need a more internal locus of control in these matters). Meanwhile on the internet, I came across the most adorable website I have ever seen in my life. My heart is warmed. Check it out.