Every day details

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A funny story to share:
The other day Josh was outside playing with his friends (insert sidebar to Charlotte: we have been keeping Josh near the house when he is by himself and he is not allowed to visit the park without a couple friends in tow. End sidebar). We get a knock at the door and assume its Josh being a pest. Then a moment later we hear the knock again and a growing sound of screaming. Blood chilling screaming that can only be from Josh. We jump up and open the door to find Josh with another parent, hand on his head, blood on his face. (Don't worry, it does get funny) Apparently another kid had thrown a rock and hit Josh in the head. Eric goes to find the kid and investigate and I take Josh to the kitchen (at this point I'm more worried about the rock thrower than Josh because Eric is extremely protective). I clean Josh up and find that its really a mostly superficial scratch on his scalp and is only bleeding a lot because of its location. He does have a small bump. Josh is still screaming a bit and crying, completely terrified. "Josh its ok" I keep repeating. Finally Josh clues me in to his distress and says, "I'm afraid this is going to be the end of me!" (Yes, that is a direct quote). I am stunned for a moment then I venture to ask "You think you are going to die?" "Yes!". This is one of those must not laugh moments of parenthood. I finally convince Josh that he is not going to die from this itty bitty scratch and bump on his head. And all is well again.
Those of you that know me will be simply amazed with what I am going to tell you next: I joined a concert choir! For me, this was a huge step out of the box. New people terrify me. Social settings terrify me. But, the director of the choir is a friend from church and just lovely and so I gave it a shot. Auditioning was, quite frankly, very scary. I was happy when I was accepted. For the last few months we have been rehearsing on Saturday morning at 7:30 a.m. I found the music quite challenging, more difficult than any I had previously tackled in my choir career. (My career consists of high school choir and some church choir.) Each week it was very gratifying to progress and grasp music that at first I thought was not only out of my learning range but my vocal range. Who knew I could hit those notes that float above the top lines of music? Occasionally the rehearsals would leave me hoarse for a day, mostly because I don't exercise my voice enough, but I found the hoarseness quite gratifying overall since it meant I had worked hard. I enjoyed (who would ever believe it) stretching not only my voice, but my comfort zone. We had our performance on Sunday night. I was amazed how we sounded, that we worked through the occasional stumbles and I enjoyed myself very much. Normally before a performance I get really nervous (people looking at me! Oh no!!) but for this performance I was excited and calm. It just felt good to be up there. We will be taking a break until the fall, I can't wait to get started back up again! For those of you with a burning need to know, our choir does have a website: http://www.michigancc.org/.
That's really the only "important" news from here. Its nice to just have the every day be simple and insignificant.

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