In the chaos of my assault, my mother’s hospital episodes and the general chaos of my life, I never mentioned chorus competition.

In the grand scheme of things it was okay.

We placed eighteenth, which in years past would have sent me to the knife drawer and the gas oven, but for some reason I’m not freaked.

Obviously I wish we had placed better, but I also look at us as being a new chorus and that this was really our first time out and these score are something of a baseline. So this was a learning experience in many ways. (I have no idea when this new philosophical attitude overtook my competitive "I must have a medal" side.)

Our performance was an audience pleaser, and that, for me, is a huge barometer of success. If the audience enjoys our performance and makes the effort to tell us that, then we have done something worthwhile. As we came up the steps from the stage area there were some former members there to meet us who told us that they were proud to be associated with us.

Later on other retired members came to find us to tell us what a great job we’d done and how our sound was still good. These ladies wouldn’t have bothered to say anything if they hadn’t meant it, so it was nice to hear these compliments.

We were also pleased with ourselves as we left the stage. This is a good sign, as it means that each member felt as if she had given the best performance that she had for those six minutes.

Personally I felt pretty good, except for about the last four bars of the last song, as I was getting dry and running out of saliva, so my voice wasn’t as strong as it usually is. I don’t think it was noticeable to anyone but me, but it did make me nervous when the director held something longer than she normally does. A couple of anxious moments as I couldn’t figure out when to sneak a breath.

The comments from the judges were actually quite good, pointing out the many things that we are doing correctly, as well as the areas that need improvement. On the good side was the comment about the strong unit sound of the lead section. On the down side were the comments from the showmanship judge that talked about out lack of "persona". I guess when we hit the stage the newer members forgot to act as well as sing.

So all these things can be corrected and changes can be made to choreography and the acting skills can be drilled.

All in all I’m happy with the general results.

Heck, I’m glad we’re still a chorus and able to compete at all!

It was a bit tough to have my mother there for the weekend, yet I was really glad that she wanted to go. She did pretty well, although getting from place to place was time consuming and often a struggle for her. I think she had a good time, although I’m sure that she was pooped.

The other challenge of the weekend was getting our room key to work. We had to get a new key each time we wanted to get into the room, because for some reason the hotel kept changing the computer code.

Or possible the computer was just really screwed up.

At one point I was locked in the stair well because you had to use your key to get OUTof the stair well. I was pounding and screaming on the hall door, but no one would let me out. Finally a man came down the stairs and was kind enough to use his key to allow me to escape. I was so grateful as I was getting really freaked out there! I didn’t realize that I had claustrophobic tendencies, but apparently I do.

So all in all it was an okay weekend.

And now we’re already at work planning for next year.