(all I could think of was the line from Toy Story 2 when Mrs. Potato Head says, "And I packed your angry eyes! Just in case") and I even had to sing the really deep man solo. Just imagine a group of big, angry guys and little ol' me in the center as the leader and tell me if you do not crack up :)In other choir news...
I was doing a lot of things in the choir that day. In addition to playing Caiaphas, I also had to sing the same solo 3 times. My friend Austin kindly volunteered me (thanks a lot!) for this ad lib solo in our women's piece called Thou My Everlasting Portion. It's really a great song, and I really love the message too. The lyrics are:
The solo in our piece is just the "Oh Master" part with all the ad-libbing, not that long part where she sings the verse in the video. Now, we had had tryouts for this solo and I didn't want it, so I didn't tryout. But conveniently EVERYONE who had originally tried out for the solo was absent that day, and perhaps because I was one of the only older members there or because I was standing conspicuously in the front row, they told me to sing it. In front of everyone. At least the other girls only had to sing it in front of more girls - I had to sing it for everyone, and then they stopped the song halfway through to fix something, so we had to start over again, and then when Monica came (the gospel choir director) I had to sing it YET AGAIN. Blech. I was lonely for my poor little comfort zone ;)
That evening we had a concert at the homeless shelter. Robert and I had quite an adventure getting there. My dad bought me a GPS to get to Baltimore, a TomTom, and he wanted me to try it out. So we plugged in the address my choir manager gave me and we got there just in time. However, "there" was not the homeless shelter. Apparently my manager had printed off the wrong address. So the good news is, the GPS works great! The bad news is, it can't help me if people give me the wrong directions. It took a while, but after some turning around we finally found the place. By then it was looking pretty gross and stormy. The choir was practicing outside and we just moved under the porch before it started to pour. It rained during the first half of the concert too, so the power went out a couple times. Luckily we were singing a cappella songs anyway. And I did sing a solo, only this time I actually wanted to. It's kind of neat, because last year we sang that song too and it has 2 solos that Michele and I would sing together; it was "the Marks girls' song" and at the concert last night Robert and I sang both the solos, so it was still the Marks' song :)
WE ONLY HAVE 4 PRACTICES UNTIL TOUR!!! I'm excited and nervous; hopefully we'll learn everything by then. We still have a lot of work on the drama to do. That morning they were handing out our costumes for the drama (mine last year was seriously a bed sheet sown together with sleeves and a hole for the head) so I was hoping to get a new one this year, and I actually did and it's really nice. Then I figured that it was probably because they had burned my old puke-covered one :) Unfortunately I think the Jesus costume is the same one from last year...but maybe they got the stains out. AND I heard that there was a video of me puking on stage! I so have to see this video. Apparently you can barely even tell I'm spewing my guts up onstage. I know I've shared this story in Sunday School before, but if you don't know the story...
It was the second to last night of tour. We had stopped for one of our much-loved Walmart trips, and when we got back to the bus I was hungry so I ate a Hostess snack that we had bought to celebrate Robert's birthday which was over tour. My mom says that was probably what made me not feel so well (hot cream sitting on a bus...i dunno) but regardless, I felt poorly and surprisingly the chaperones didn't have any Tums or anything. They just gave me some Ginger Ale (that was not flat or room temperature) and this charcoal pill that I was supposed to take with food. Bright idea. So of course the night I'm sick we have the most amazing food ever. I get some bread and pasta, trying for the bland things, to take the pill. Afterwards I'm feeling better, so I decide to go up and perform the drama with the choir. I'm standing in the front row, and the 4 speakers are in front of me, blocking me from most of the audience's view. I can really only see the band to the right of me. The stage was raised up with about 5 steps on either side. I'm standing on the far left of the stage and I'm doing ok until about the 3rd song where Jesus arrives. I start to feel dizzy and the lights are blinking around Jesus' head, so I decide to sit down on the riser right where I am. We're told not to leave in the middle of a song, so I wait for the song to end as I try to decide if I should leave or not (since I am feeling a little unbalanced). Just as I see my friend coming down to sing the next song and think, "oh I better go now" WHAM! Puke everywhere. It was kind of like a sneeze, so I got most of it all in my lap, but it was not some tiny little "hold it in your mouth till the end of the song" puking like one story our director told us. No, it was "fire hydrant spewing out of every pore of my body" puking. So of course now I definitely have to leave, and I have to walk across the entire stage - where I slip on my own puke, almost knock down a mike, and actually end up throwing the puke I'm still holding in my hands onto Jesus. Luckily the bathroom was right off the stage and also luckily we were performing the drama (remember, bed sheets) so I'm able to take off my dirty costume since I'm wearing clothes underneath. It takes a while though before anyone comes to check on me. By then, I'm feeling LOADS better, but I'm worried because my puke is covering the entire stage, and the Triumphant Entry scene was coming up, where all the choir members go out into the audience and dance around. I was sure someone was bound to slip, since I almost had, so during that scene when they were out dancing around one of the chaperones went out there and cleaned it up. It was the choir's best, most energetic Hosanna song EVER. They were waving their palm branches and trying to keep the attention away from the stage. Apparently some members didn't even know what had happened until they asked, "What's Mrs. Chandler doing up on stage?" It was pretty crazy. I got so many compliments though! Everyone was like, "wow good job, I didn't even know, you were so inconspicuous!" and I was like, "really? because the entire floor was COVERED IN PUKE but ok, that's cool." So now I am going down in Maranatha history as "Spew on Cue: The Girl Who Couldn't Hold It In" :) It was pretty great. Not sure how this year's shortened tour is gonna top that, but we'll see...we ARE going to Georgia and Alabama, so maybe I'll get stuck with a bunch of hicks or something, who knows...
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