Spring Ring–or how I spent my Saturday

My Saturday was spent with my bell choir peeps. Can I call them ‘peeps’? Sure, I can.

Every year the American Guild of English Handbell Ringers sponsors a Spring Ring, where bell choirs from all over the state come together for an all day ring session with a guest clinician. Our choir attends every other year, and this is my third time at this event. It’s usually held at a school, in the gym. Imagine if you will 19 bell choirs all set up together in one room, playing the same pieces. Amazing sound. There were 253 of us there.

I must admit I’ve had a little bit of a bad attitude about this before. It’s just such a long day. A LONG day of ringing bells. It’s killer on your feet, legs, back, shoulders, hands….well, it’s just very taxing. And I’m reminded that I’m not young anymore. Getting older every year, in fact.

But our guest clinician, Timothy Waugh, was really amazing. He was so positive and had a wonderful attitude. We weren’t just a whole bunch of choirs playing the same songs, but we were trying our best to tell stories in song. I learned a lot and it was a really good experience. Exhausting, but good.

Thankfully, we brought our own crew, who did all the unloading and loading for us. It’s a HUGE ordeal to move a bell choir of our size, with 7 octaves of bells, chimes in their big old cases, tables, pads, risers, etc. They have to transport all our stuff in a big semi that is rented for the day. We are lucky that way. At the end of the day, we performed a short concert. Four of the choirs performed solos (we were one of those solo performing groups) and we played all six of the songs we had worked on through the day. Although our solo could have gone better, the concert was fun.

After we put everything away and I changed out of my sparkley dress, I was hauling all my stuff out to the parking lot. I had my dress, my purse, a second pair of shoes, my water bottle, and my piece of carpet to stand on. I could barely hold on to all my stuff, and I wandered out to look for my car. Ahem. Excuse me–to look for RYAN’S car. I knew I had parked pretty close, but I couldn’t find it. I kept clicking the “unlock” button hoping the car would blink at me, but no such luck. Our director, Tom, walked by, and asked if I was lost. “I can’t find my car,” I said, feeling really stupid. He asked if I wanted to drive around a look for it, but I was pretty sure I could find it eventually. But then, after walking around some more, I still couldn’t find it. Another friend from the choir stopped and asked if I needed help. I must have looked rather forlorn in my exhausted state hauling all my gear. I took her up on her offer to drive around and look for it. It’s such a small car, and it’s dark grey–not a stand out color–so it’s easy to misplace it, right? Tom pulled around again and rolled down his window. “Are you sure you parked in this lot?” he said. Oh. There’s more than one lot? Hello! So my friend Serena drove me around to the other lot on the OTHER side of the school, and there it was. Our little grey car! I just walked out following everyone else, not realizing I was walking out the WRONG way. Ugh.

Once I found the car, I started to relax a little bit. I drove over to my sister’s house to give her a birthday present. My sister who is expecting a baby any day to add to her current houseful of kids. She is amazing. Her kids are all so cute and happy, and they all wanted to show me ALL their toys while their mom was trying to talk to me. I obviously don’t visit enough. It was nice to just sit and visit with her. Hopefully all will go well with this new baby and she will be born without problems. They are worried about her measuring small, so she has to go in for all kinds of tests. I think her poor old uterus is just tired and worn out!

By the time I got home, it was almost bed time for the kids. They took a break from their video game extravaganza to say hi to me, while I ate some dinner and then dragged myself up and flopped on the bed.

I turned on the tv and flipped some channels, and saw that they were playing Les Miserables on PBS. Amazing. I settled in, got some Kleenex, and watched the second half. In an attempt to avoid going to bed, the kids all wandered in, and climbed on my bed. “What is this?” they asked, “Who is that?” “Why is she crying?” Hey, I’m not here to give you a commentary, I thought. But I tried to explain it in simple terms, and they were soon enthralled, as well. It was such a nice moment. In my cozy bed, surrounded by my kids, trying to instill in them a love of all things musical. But then Ryan came in, scoffed at my viewing choice (he’s not a fan) and sent the kids to bed. It’s a good thing, because they really drag out those PBS pledge drive shows. But I kept watching, tears rolling down my cheeks. It’s just all so SAD. But the music is so beautiful! Even though Ryan doesn’t like the show, he was kind enough to set it to record the next showing, since I had missed the whole first half. He may be crotchety and not like musicals, but he knows me, and is sweet like that.

All in all a good day. Exhausting. I got zero Saturday jobs done, and neither did my family, but we’ll survive the mess, and I’ll remember the musical experience of the day.

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Our Roadshow, by the way, will be performed tomorrow. I’m hoping I can get some good video and post a song or two to show you how incredible these kids are, and what a great show we’ve created. And then I will sigh a great big sigh of relief to let you all know that I have survived.