Night out

My brother in law came sneaking in tonight at 6.45 p.m. and offered us tickets to the theater.
So we got all dressed up and had a lovely unexpected night out.


These two men kept me in stitches during their acting and moved me to tears with this song...
You're going to have to take my word for it that the lyrics are pretty good!

Christmas

When the angels appeared to the shepherds, late at night, they sang "Glory be to God in the highest; on earth peace; good will toward men."

There's a dutch Christmas song based on these words. For me, no Christmas service is complete without singing it.

I thought I would share it with you:




Merry Christmas everyone!

Singing

I love singing. I used to sing in the RVA choir, and I have sung in choirs here, but not very often. But I also like singing at home, loudly, falsely, in my miss piggy voice, or just melodically (or so I like to think). There's just a small problem. Not so much my problem, but a problem for my dear loving family members.
The thing is, I have singing dyslexia or something like that. Somehow I never know exactly what I am singing, so what comes out is often laughably ridiculous. Not that I think so, because I will keep singing it even if it makes no sense at all, just for the joy of having noise coming out of my mouth.
But nowadays I have to be very very careful about where I sing and what I sing. Because practically every single time either husband or children will look at me in dismay or simply burst into laughter. Today I was caught singing "silently, across my heart" instead of "sign your name, across my heart".

Yes, it does make more sense now.........
So I have to keep on the alert for when nobody is around so I can let go with a great blast of nonsensical songs. Now I find myself singing the first couple of words that I'm sure about and then tapering off to a na na na na which covers a multitude of verbal sins.

Today I'm thankful for a family that can laugh together. Though sometimes I wish it wasn't so often at my expense!

Night of the Proms

I was out with Herman and some other family members last friday. We went to Night of the Proms, which is a kind of pop meets classic music evening. Held in a huge stadium with a couple thousand people attending.
One of the stars of the evening was Sinead O'Connor. Everybody remember her song Nothing Compares to You? That song is irrevocably linked to my dating Herman way back when.

She came on stage wearing a wide black pants and a tunic, not a trace of make-up on her face. She closed her eyes, opened her throat and SANG! No gyrating, no flirting with the camera, no pretensions whatsoever. She looked completely approachable, like you would strike up an easy conversation with her while standing in the grocery line. She was so normal, it was almost odd.

Close behind her the lead singer of the Simple Minds came on stage. That was another story. An old geezer, attempting desperately to look cool. He did the gyrating, leaning into the audience, grabbing peoples hands and so forth and so on. He wore too tight jeans and to my taste, kind of made a fool of himself. Him I would not say Hi to, it would feed his ego too much. (yeah right, like my saying Hi would matter to him! well... you know what I mean!).

So I guess I'm grateful for stars who act like normal people, who give you a chance to enjoy music for what it is. Glorious sounds, no show needed.

Song tekst

I went to a Kees Kraayenoord concert. I loved this song.

God Of The Moon And Stars

God of the moon and stars
God of the gay- and singles bars
God of the fragile hearts we are, I come to you
God of our history, god of the future that will be
What will you make of me, I come to you

God of the meek and mild,
God of the reckless and the wild
God of the unreconciled, I come to you
God of our life and death
God of our secrets unconfessed
God of our every breath, I come to you

God of the rich and poor
God of the princess and the whore
God of the ever open door, I come to you
God of the unborn child
God of the pure and undefiled
God of the pimp and paedophile, I come to you

God of the war and peace
God of the junkie and the priest
God of the greatest and the least, I come to you
God of the refugee
God of the prisoner and the free
God of our doubt and certainty, I come to you

God of our joy and grieve
God of the lawyer and the thief
God of our faith and unbelief, I come to you
God of the wounds we bear
God of the deepest dreams we share
God of our unspoken prayer, I come to you

God of a world that's lost
God of the lonely cross
God who has come to us, I come to you

Mamma Mia

I just went to see Mamma Mia with Marinda. That just must be the ultimate feel good movie! I couldn't help but keep grinning and heard Marinda laughing next to me. I remember feeling the same way when I went to see the musical a couple of years ago. I got a spontaneous invite on the spur of the moment and went with exceedingly low expectations. After all, it was going to be ABBA in dutch, how tacky is that!?! But I enjoyed every moment of it.
Meryl Streep just blew my mind. Just seeing her gyrating all over the screen, my lordy, I wish I still had that kind of moves in me! And she's 20 years older than I am!! Just imagine the amount of guts it must take to just let it all go and act ridiculous. That counts for all of the cast though. Especially in the end, when they all show up in those wonderful ABBA suits and rock the stage. Made me want to get right up there and get groovin.
Music from ABBA will do that to me anytime. I can't tell you how many times I imagined myself being the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen. (oh for those days!!) Or singing Money, money, money, or Happy New Year. One of their songs is also "our" love song.
ABBA rules!

Clarinet

Just when I was feeling inspired to post a picture of myself playing clarinet, Dori did it for me! (yes, yes, that's me on the right, with the wonderful pants. Don't you love them?).
I was inspired by her post of herself in all her "saxy" glory.
So yes, I did play the clarinet. For a grand total of three years. Three very enjoyable years! When I first went to join band I wanted to play the flute. So elegant and lovely and ladylike. But, much to my dismay, the band teacher bluntly told me he had more than enough flutes. So I had to pick something else. I thought the sax was much to huge and masculine and then opted for the smaller clarinet. It was not a choice made by my passion for the instrument, that's for sure!
I then spent the next couple of weeks painfully practicing in a little room by myself until I got caught up with the musical level of the band after which I was finally allowed to join them.
When I was in RVA, band practice was during the lunch hour. So I have no memory at all of long leisurely lunches on the grassy fields. I always ran to the head of the lunch line, gobbled my meal and then sprinted up the many many steps to the band room. I'm guessing that that did wonders for my breathing technique.
One magical time, I was even allowed to direct the band. Oh wow! When we had our concert, I lost my timing and somebody had to wave their trumpet at me to get me back on track.....

Since living in Holland I have made several different efforts to start playing again. The efforts usually last about.... say.... two weeks. I never got back in a band, there's a whole different band culture here, and lessons are just terribly expensive. I still have my clarinet though, up in the attic. It has survived numerous moves. The case is covered with stickers which hold special memories.
Though I think that one of these days, I will have to give it away to somebody who will actually play the thing!
Nostalgia can only go so far.

Meme

My first meme! I got tagged by Melanie. (Thanks Melanie, now I feel like I really belong in the blogging world!). And being tagged has finally forced me to figure out how to put a hyperlink in my posts.
Well, this meme asks me to name 6 quirky things about myself. You would not believe the amount of time I have spent thinking about this. Maybe due to the fact that I have this terrific head cold which limits my range of thought quite badly. In fact, I'll name these colds as my first quirky thing.

1. Head cold
As a child of my parents I claim partial ownership of this particular way of having a cold. It's not your average runny nose, coughing type of cold. No, we bring it up to another level. Colds hit my eyes, but only one at a time. That means that I walk around with one red, glazed, swollen, burning, teary eye for a day or two, and then, when I think things are getting better, the other eye gets hit. It's hard to be taken seriously when your eyes are two distinctly different sizes and leak spontaneously! People look at you worriedly and then ask if you're all right. Then the nose run. I have frequently felt a strong desire to stick a tampon up my nose, it's that bad! Some people may be able to work with a cold. It's not something that I think my colleagues would appreciate..

2. Lyrics
I love singing along to songs, but am a total dingbat when it comes to lyrics. For years I sang "I can see clearly now, the rain has come". Or what do you think about "smoke is sin" instead of "smoky sings"?? Or "Although we've run to the end of the road"?

3. Reading
I read obsessively. Some people do not think of this as being quirky, just annoying. I have read while biking, while frying pancakes, while cooking, while hanging up the laundry. In a car, in a plane, in the train, while walking along the street. Any place, any time, is a time for me to read.

4. Humor
I have a vulgar sense of humor. I like dirty jokes and double entendres. I cannot however, tell jokes. I am very very proud of myself when I manage to make a group of people laugh, I think of it as quite an accomplishment!

5. Math
I have a traumatic aversion to math thanks to my sweet 4th grade teacher who had her own unique way of getting a point across. The result is that anything that has anything to do with math can almost have me hyperventilating. You can ask me what two plus two is, and I will know, but anything beyond that dissappears in a big bog of fear. I am exaggerating only slightly...

6. Whistling
According to my family, I cannot whistle properly. It has become a standing family joke to laugh at me when I'm whistling. Evidently I pucker up my mouth in an absurd way and produce a breathy noise that they love to imitate...

That's it for my quirkiness for now! I would now like to tag Michelle, Sharon, Lise and Renzo

Sunday Music

There's not a much bigger contrast to be made than the difference between the church service pictured above and the church service we attended this morning. Maybe all the grey heads I saw when we walked in should have warned me off! We went on our first churchseeking expedition today and ended up in a building with a large number of older people singing even older songs. I nudged Marinda and told her I felt like I had been transported back in time, and we al lhad to supress a smile every now and again. I have a sneaking suspicion that this will not become our home church here!
The church in Ethiopia, although pretty traditional, at least had the added pleasure of a Nigerian choir (love those deep deep african voices!) and a youth group that did their best to show some groovy moves. Our old church had is own enthousiasms, including people waving flags, and some people who did this little evangelical dance where you jump up and down and clap at the same time. I'm looking for some place where I find like-minded people, where there's room for spontanaiety should the spirit hit you, but where people are also sane and down to earth and willing to share sorrows and doubts. And where there is room for laughter!

Music

Nothing peps me up as much as listening to great old 80's hits. I have an aversion to housework, but if I turn the music on loud it will usually get me going. First I have to get off my butt and turn the music on though, and sometimes that's a challenge in itself!
I used to play the clarinet and have attempted to play it again over the last couple of years but somehow that has never really turned out well. I manage to play for about a week and then my clarinet goes back into its case to gather dust for another year or two. A couple of weeks ago I actually put it on the internet to sell. That was quite something because the case alone is so jampacked with memories that I have a very sentimental connection to it! It's covered with stickers from different countries I've been in.
Funny how objects can carry such memories. For example, I'll always be grateful to my mom for lugging around a lot of childhood pictures, report cards and essays I wrote. I hardly ever look at them, but I love knowing I have them! And when I do open up the box, the smell of the old paper immediately brings all kinds of memories to mind.
I'm rambling, so I think I'll stop and get myself to bed. That's probably the wisest thing to do right now!

Music

Music has brought a smile to my face a couple of times today.
Yesterday my brother in law was here. He's making collections of music per year on his computer and has now landed in 1982. His talking about that reminded me of a radio program I sometimes listen to called "The Tacky Hour" in which everybody can write in with their top 10 of favorite tacky songs. I love that hour! I hear all kinds of golden oldies come by and get that "remember when" feeling. I had been wondering what kinds of songs I would come up with and talking to my brother in law encouraged me to start a list.
What fun that is! Out come all the good memories which make me smile. Here's my list up to now:

- Lady in Red, Chris de Burgh
- When I'm feeling blue, Phil Collins
- Say you, say me, Lionel Richie
- The song from Top Gun (can't remember the name, but you know what I mean!)
- Sailing, Rod Stewart
- Alone, ....... some kind of rock band?
- House for Sale, Margiet Eshuis
- Love on the Rocks, Neil Diamond
- Mother Earth, Within Temptation
- Take on Me, AHA
- Played-a-live, Safri Duo

These eclectic varied songs all have some kind of special memory attached, or a special gut feeling. I'm looking forward to discovering what other songs I will put on my list, and maybe I will then ask aforementioned brother in law to make me a CD.
Think of the fun I'll have from listening to that!