A Proud Day

Our new choral season began with practice on Thursday, and Mass today. I am always so excited about meeting all my choir friends again after the summer, and making such glorious music. As expected, it was fabulous! We sang Mendelssohn’s “See What Love,” and Parry’s “I Was Glad” - this time, since all the choir members were there - with two choirs, one upstairs and one down. And my little Rachael was in the upstairs choir!!!!! She has been studying choral singing at the St. James Youth Music program since she was about eight, and now is quite the accomplished chorister. Naturally, she did very well, and I was so proud of her, and of myself for having a hand in producing such an infant phenomenon. Many folks thought she would be nervous (I was terrified when I first joined the choir) but she was pretty blasé about it all. As well she should be, having been singing at St. James for about eleven years.
After Mass, I finally did two long delayed tasks – I cleaned my refrigerator and organized my pantry. The refrigerator had some new life forms growing in it, and the pantry had artifacts from ancient days. There was a roll of polenta which I bought long ago, and frequently offered to cook for Rachael, but she was never interested. At just the right instant, Rebecca called from the nearby grocery store, and we decided that she should come help me eat up some of the odd food, including the polenta which I was planning to serve with some hermetically sealed tomato sauce in a paper-like box. She fixed chard with her special utterly delicious recipe, and I was in charge of our entrée. I was opening the box of tomato sauce when I noted that it said, “Best if used by December, 1999.” Hmmmm, a little out of date! I opened it and sniffed it, and while it didn’t smell icky, it also didn’t smell good. Rebecca quickly fixed some emergency tomato sauce from a can of tomatoes, a branch of basil, and a huge glob of garlic. She tried to mill it in my food mill, but the mill wouldn’t mill, so it was lumpy. Actually, I was happy because I prefer lumpy. All in all, it was a quick and very tasty dinner for a busy day.