Feeling glad it's over

[kayre]

I'm having a rather rough week. The early Christmas service went well, and left me feeling a bit better... until about 10 minutes after the service when the Diva cornered me. First she wanted to know if she could sing O Holy Night at the late service; then she asked for another song which I flatly refused to accompany without several days' practice. Then she was back to O Holy Night, with her daughters, and if I didn't want to accompany then they'd do it a capella, or was it that I didn't really want her to do it. I said yes, I had good music planned and am not comfortable with just throwing music together, especially for Christmas Eve. So she flanked me-- asked Pastor when she could do it, giving the impression that I'd said yes. So suddenly I heard her rehearsing a capella with 4 young women, having recruited two more. And they were excruciatingly bad, and belting it out like a Broadway showstopper. I went home for an hour, and when I returned she took offense when I asked them to rehearse elsewhere so I could warm up. I actually cowered behind the organ while they sang. I was careful; the only person who saw me was a young woman who actually fled the room.

On the home front, we live too far from our families to travel, so we try to gather in a few people in similar circumstances for the holidays. This year we invited 5 people in all. Two accepted, two said they'd let me know and then never did. In the end, no one showed up. I'm feeling like a waste of space right now... or at least like a cog in the church machine rather than a person.