ABBA?....SERIOUSLY??

I have been so exhausted the last few days, I have barely even looked at my computer. Sunday was Jeff's birthday, which can be such a grueling event even though the intentions are sweet. My hubby, (despite his sometimes biting sarcasm and his "are you serious?" look) is a very sentimental person. And for as long as I have known him, he has insisted on spending his birthday driving to spend time with the people that he loves. As opposed to me who figures I'll get a phone call and a card and life's good. He needs to venture into the world and physically hug and see his family and friends......and it's actually really nice. And he insists on recording everyone as they say "Happy Birthday Jeff" so a year from now he can see how we all have changed. That's what I've always wanted.....to see how much younger I looked last year.

But because everyone is scattered, we ended up foregoing our usual Sunday morning tradition of eating at Mrs. Bridges Tea Room and that just felt weird. I missed not having our cup of tea and salmon cakes. Eh, we'll go next Sunday. Or shall I say, we BETTER go next Sunday. Hehe.

I spent my entire Monday sewing in the lining on my friend's dress. I wonder if the people who write the patterns have ever really sewn an article of clothing before? I found myself making some obnoxious changes in order to make the dress work. For instance, the lining called for a lightweight fusible webbing - which for all intensive purposes makes sense because the dress is satin and a heavy duty webbing would suck. However, whoever thought that the lightweight webbing had enough density to form the casing in which to insert the boning was on crack. It just kept tearing. Of course it would! So I ended up making satin tubes and matching them to the bodice seams, and THEN inserted the stupid boning. I apologize if that whole paragraph was total gibberish to you guys, but take my word for it....what a pain in the hiney.

Now that I've lined the dress and we're on the home stretch, I'm a little nervous that the dress won't fit. We'll cross that bridge when we get there.

And of course I am singing at this wedding because apparently, that's what I do. I'm the wedding singer. Which is cool......when I'm given more than two weeks to prepare for the event. I was asked about a month and a half ago if I would sing two or three songs as a "gift" for the bride and groom. Since I sing in my shower as well, I'm not really sure if one can really consider it a "gift" but I complied and said "Sure, why not?" Just let me know what you want me to sing so that I don't end up going up there and busting out something inappropriate.....like "Hit the Road Jack, Ray Charles' style.

SO, remember, I say, "sure, why not?" Here's why not. I had to call the groom last night to ask him WHAT SONGS I WAS SINGING. And the scary part was that he didn't know off the top of his head. Not a good sign. So he puts his wife- to- be on the phone and she says: "You Raise Me Up by Josh Groban (for her mother) I Love You by Sarah McLaughlin and I Have A Dream by ABBA (because her mother liked the movie Mama Mia).

I have a pretty good idea of how to sing the first song, I am not familiar with the second song, and....... I'm singing ABBA at a wedding??? I now have two weeks to sit with Jeff and figure out how to make these three songs not only work as acoustic pieces, but to work with each other. And then once that happens, I can learn the words.

A gift from Kohl's would have been so much easier. Let's see what happens.