#anyways! yay! choir!! the last time i sang in a choir is over 4 years ago and still in highschool and we were like. 6 people.

[chromxena]

joined a local choir and ah, singing with other people is just so fun and nice and beautiful <3

[islandpcosjourney]

Day 16 (pre-spring clean)

15th March 2022

Right, no chance of me falling asleep tonight, I’m staying over at work to write this before I drive home!

So, I hadn’t finished telling you about my day. Teaching in Ness then teaching in Carloway, leaving the dog at home each time. She’s getting much better at being left nowadays but used to be a right pest, moving things around and having “accidents”. She was left 4 times yesterday and good as gold she was. She still goes nuts when I come home, as if she thinks I was never ever going to return but by the final time yesterday she was like, och yeah, you again!

Last night marked the very first time we “met” as a choir – Carloway Gaelic Choir – in around 2years! Yes we did a lockdown video where I sang to my potatoes (we still maintain it was the best crop ever as a result), but we lost momentum after that and meeting on Skype (as we did for 10years) just wasn’t ever the same again. SO last night, we tried using Zoom and seeing each person with their video on, as opposed to just audio. It didn’t make a huge amount of difference as they’re all on mute anyway but to a certain extent when I was looking away from the piano, I could see them singing away in their blissful ignorance, without me correcting them. Asking if everyone was ok with that section was a tad easier as I could either see them nodding or shaking their heads rather than waiting for a cry to come out of the silence.

As I sit here typing, my dog just won’t leave me alone (she comes with me to work but stays upstairs while I’m teaching) and now I’m wondering if there’s yet another tick on her – yup, there it is! As soon as I find it and touch it, she’s crying away and licking me – “thank you mamaidh, now please remove it” but the tool is at home 🥺 and I had to calm her down by looking at her straight in the eye and explain that I’ll take all of the pain away later, but she’ll have to wait until we get home. Eventually, repeating that over and over, she gets the hint and lies down in front of the stove. I’ve always talked to her like she’s a human and I honestly think she understands better that way.

Back to choir…… So it was lovely to see folk online again and to get us started with this year’s Mòd repertoire but myself and our Gaelic tutor were feeling a little lonely on our own, with everyone choosing to attend on Zoom due to various reasons but then one soprano turned up halfway through – yay! Our covid cases at the moment are quite high so it might be a few weeks before people will feel confident enough to come out again, but fingers crossed sometime soon. Although we are a choir who started out online back in 2011, it’s not the same as socially meeting for a rehearsal and really, there’s no point in renting an area if we just continue online, as my home will do just fine for that. Still, good to get the 2022 season underway!

I had a most productive day again today with an early start to come over to town to teach online (clarsach & pedal harp, which are kept in my music room in Stornoway) and then I had hours to work on preparations for mine & Calum’s harp festival concert on the 11th of April. It’s only just under 4 weeks away and I had a bit of a nightmare about it the other night, but I can safely say after today that I am feeling lots more confident. Still not ready but a big chunk is safer than it was and will hopefully prevent any repeat performance of waking up at 3.30am and having to watch a whole episode of Grand Designs to “wind down” again to get a few more hours sleep before poochie needed out.

In saying that it’s now 9.30pm and I got distracted by my composition again, adding another section into it 😂Couldn’t help myself! Procrastinating with the harp – that’s something I haven’t had the pleasure of in years as I don’t live with my instruments anymore. I deliberately keep them at work, away from home life and I have to say it has affected my natural rhythm of creativity as I don’t just ‘stumble upon’ playing it or get ‘lost’ in the music and find hours have gone by where I haven’t even stopped for a drink. Speaking of which, Kevin did ask me earlier how my juicing is going and if I’ve been drinking enough and I can honestly say, no 🥴 I’ve only had 1 beaker of juice and 1 of water – oopsies. I’ve just been far to engrossed in my creativity today, not realising where the time has gone. I even have a sore back from standing in one position, playing, and writing on the laptop. The hot bath will be very welcome tonight and speaking of that, it’s really time to go home……as Hollags keep telling me! I’m not planning on coming into town tomorrow until the afternoon so I’m making the most of my time here, even if it is late. Nobody is at home waiting for me so I can do whatever with the time I have. Mind you in saying that, married or not, we should all do whatever we want with the time we have been given. Now I’m going to get all philosophical and “wise” hahaha No, I just mean that life is too short, and we should today what we want to do tomorrow. It’s so easy to say “the diet starts tomorrow” but does it? Why not today? Why not right now? Probably because we always want one more of everything. The fear of losing out. What’s that called in modern society now? FOMO? The fear of missing out. That’s it, but with food. We fear missing out on certain foods when we “diet” and that’s why dieting is not good because it doesn’t take into consideration everyday life. Coming across someone with a biscuit, the smell of food from a restaurant you’re passing by, the smell of a neighbour cooking soup mmmmmmmmmmm Can you tell I’m missing food a weeeeeee bit? I am already planning what favourites I’ll be having as soon as I’m done these 28 days, having a few days of eating before heading down to Edinburgh and juicing for another 10 days or so. It’s not good putting your body through too much at once so I always tend to break up the juice-only phases anyway, so my body doesn’t go into starvation mode and soak up every ounce of fat once it gets its hold on some digestible food again!

Anyway, home time! Poor hollags.