Ick. After finishing Chapter 5, the rest of yesterday pretty much went into a downward spiral. A co-worker thought I was being serious about someting when it was pretty obvious I was joking. So my joking reply made it back to a bigwig here. Thank God these people have the ability to laugh non-maliciously at themselves and others. All is well now, but this co-worker knows me pretty well and I was surprised to see such a stunning Blonde Moment from him.

And then I went home and found out our friend needed to crash at our place because the pipes froze and broke in his apartment. Not a problem. Mark and I are both happy to help him out. But it meant that I had even less quality time alone with Mark than I usually do on Mondays. Which ended up being a really Big Problem due to what happpened at my chorus rehearsal last night.

Our director is off training other directors and singers in Australia last week and this week (I know, cry her a river). This means that our assistant director is in charge, with me filling in a little here and there to pick up some of the slack. Last week, Edie gave me a couple hours advance notice of what she wanted me to do. She gave me two minutes notice yesterday. And that was after I had tried to clear up a confusion about the choreography that really perturbed me. So the ten minutes I spent in the car on my way to practice trying to put myself in a better spot for rehearsal had already been tested and found lacking. I tried to keep at it as I prepared for what I had suddenly found out were my duties for the evening. I thought I had managed it enough to survive. I was wrong. As soon as I step up to direct, Edie tells me to work on this for the chorus. I take it in stride and follow her instructions. As I'm directing, Edie comes up behind me, firmly puts her hand on my shoulders to prevent me from moving with the beat, and tells me to stop bouncing. Meanwhile my whole face is to the chorus and I have to find someway to hide the frustration and anger that I feel after this remark. I have no idea if I succeeded. So we finish a once through of the song. And I start to go over why we had taken it very slowly and figure out what we need to work on when everyone sort of bombards me with their opinions, questions, suggestions, corrections. Edie thrusts music in my face to show me what I had missed in my direction. It was just too much.

And to top it all off, my brain chose at that particular moment to really get upset that my mother had not given me my brother's new address yet. I know that this shouldn't surprise me anymore. My mother doesn't do anything like this on purpose. But I have no idea how she was able to send out an email with my brother's new info to everybody but me. And once I made her aware of this fact, she felt awful and told me she send it out right away to me. But she hasn't. And that fact combined with everyone criticizing me, telling me what to do instead, what I'm doing wrong - or just in general not allowing me to have any authority as a director - I just lost it. I left the room in tears and found a quiet spot in the bathroom so I could be upset for a while. In a group like that, there's usually at least two or three people who come after you after a few moments to see if you're OK. About five minutes go by before Edie comes. And, quite frankly, I didn't want to see her then. She felt bad that she might have caused me to be upset. I told her it wasn't just her. And she understood. And then I just started talking about how I really wasn't having fun with our chorus anymore, that I would rather have spent this particular Monday night with Mark and my writing. She said that she could tell I wasn't having fun (this, believe it or not, did not make me feel better), and that everyone has different priorities or something. I just got the feeling that she was telling me I should quit or take a leave of absence. This made me even more upset, because then I started to wonder just how badly I was performing in my duties for the chorus. I found a way to make it through the rest of the night at rehearsal (without directing, thank God). And I must have done a damn fine job of putting on a happy face because no one, no one, came up to me afterward to ask if I was OK, if everything was alright, etc. No one. Usually at least five people swarm you at the end of rehearsal to see if you're OK. But I was summarily ignored. And then I had to go home, knowing our friend was there, and that I just didn't feel comfortable sobbing into Mark's shoulder while we had a guest. So I had to put on another happy face. And that one must have been damn good, too, because Mark didn't catch on that I was upset at all.

Last night was just awful. And I couldn't even lean on Mark without feeling worse for doing so in front of our guest. I'm tired. I want to go home and go to bed. I don't want to go to the all day rehearsal on Saturday. I want to move beyond this ickiness and write. But I just don't see how I can do it.