Saturday, December 22, 2007

The joyfulness and loneliness of Christmas

It's 3 days to Christmas and as usual, my church has been a-busying with all sorts of Christmas activities. Well, mainly just the carolling and a Christmas Children's Production which runs on two days, which was yesterday (Friday) and today (Saturday). And since I'm involved in both carolling and the play, my Christmas hasn't been much of a holiday yet. More like nonstop practice, practice and more practice. Which is quite tiring, but enjoyable as well. We get to do some pretty funny warm-ups before each play practice... things likes pretending to be statues acting out various scenes, 'passing claps' to each other in a circle, tongue twisters, rolling up into little balls and vocal warm-ups...all mainly to help us release our inhibitions on stage as well as to help us learn to project our voices.

Our first run for the play today went pretty well. The church was quite full of visitors, and the play went 'almost' perfect...I say 'almost' because the play totally did not end as planned. Some of the cast was supposed to do a dance to the song 'Joy (To The World)' by Avalon, and we were supposed to have some kids doing a dance with the banners while I, who plays the very old lady with the English accent (decided to go for that instead of the Diedric the Disgruntled Elf voice, coz' it's very hard to sing with that voice :P) was supposed to toss aside my walking stick and break out into a very energetic and hilarious dance at the end. Somehow or another the technical people played the wrong part of the finale song, and all of us who were dancing had to 'improvise'. Needless to say, it was exceedingly messy, and the kids couldn't do their banner dance and I couldn't do my old lady dance. But at least we managed to cover up somewhat when everyone moved aside and left the poor guy who plays a court jester in the middle of the stage. He just pretended to look so blur that it turned out to be so funny! Apparently someone said that that was the best part of the show...so it wasn't a total disaster. :) Anyhow, we have another run tomorrow, so *hopefully* the same screw-up doesn't happen again. But other than that, from what I could tell backstage, everything else went really well. The timing was pretty good, the prop changes for the different scenes were done pretty fast, and one of the kids who was saying her lines so softly during practices was much louder...basically it was MUCH better than our practices. Thank God!

So anyway, tomorrow is going to be another busy day, and I still need to wake up early to do some super last minute Christmas shopping. Not exactly a fun task for me since I don't really enjoy shopping and I enjoy thinking of what to buy for people even less. I hate getting impersonal presents that I don't know whether people will like or not...it makes my life a whole lot easier if I have a pretty good idea what the person wants or likes, coz' then I don't have to wrack my brains figuring out what to get them that won't end up gathering dust in some corner of their house...or even worse, re-wrapped and thrown into the next church Christmas gift exchange. Buying presents for church people is especially difficult since there are just so many people to buy for, and in addition to the problem of not knowing what they want or like, I also have a problem of insufficient finances to buy reasonably good presents. So whenever I had the time in previous years, I'd try to do something a bit more personal like a handmade bookmark for everyone... or at least give some cute little bag of candies. But this year, I haven't had the time to do that, so I had to settle for the dreaded 'less personal and probably useless' little trinkets. And I still haven't gotten something for all my friends. Bleah... maybe I'll just go for the good ol' candy canes, if I can find some tomorrow! Or I could just go all scrooge-like and not buy presents for those I haven't bought for. Wahahaha.

In addition to the headache of present-buying during Christmas is also that annoying feeling that I'm going to spend another Christmas and New Year without a 'special someone' to share it with. Well, yes, I have family and friends to spend the holidays with... and usually I get along pretty fine without a guy in my life (except when I have a crush on a guy, which is equally as annoying, and is unfortunately happening as well!!!)... but it's always around this time of year when I start thinking how nice it would be to have a boyfriend to go hang out with during the holidays, or to give a smoochie to when the new year countdown ends. And yes, the fact that I am so totally into a guy right now TOTALLY is not helping. But anyhow, the annoying pangs will go away once the new years starts and I'm all busy at work again. Plus the only time I've ever had a guy to celebrate Christmas and new year with me was last year... and one of the most unforgettable memories of that time was seeing him throw up nonstop in the toilet bowl because he drank beer, wine and God knows what other kinds of alcohol, which apparently did not mix well in his stomach. Not exactly one of the highlights of my life... and sort of helped to kill my notions of a romantic Christmas and New Year celebrations with that 'special someone'. Hahaha, ok ok, so I'm being a bit unfair coz' I did enjoy spending the holidays hanging out with him in Singapore... but that's all over now. I'm single again, liking another guy, hoping against hope that by some miracle of God I would get the best Christmas present in the form of this guy actually telling me that he likes me too, but knowing that that is probably never going to happen and I shall just enjoy my celebrations as I usually do... with family and friends. Which I am still thankful for, considering there are probably tons of people out there who might be away from their family and friends, or have no one to celebrate with at all... which is why as ironic as it is, Christmas can be a lonely time for some people.

I'm thinking this year, I'll indulge in my developing love for artsy fartsy photography and go walk around in some nicely decorated shopping complexes, taking pictures of the decorations. But how nice if I could do that with that 'special someone'....Hahaha...*Carol slaps herself on the head*.

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