a hard time

I went to Mass this afternoon with DS1, he's my buddy. What I appreciate about him is that he knows there is no point in arguing with me, so he doesn't -- about things like eating vegetables, brushing teeth, going to bed, and now, going to Mass. We've told him that doing all these things will help him to grow up into the best possible person, and he believes us. I hope and pray that his little sister and brother come to the same place when they are as old as he is now. The eat-your-vegetables argument was old 2 years ago.

So no, my hard time today was not with getting DS1 to go to Mass with me. It was wholly within myself, at Mass, that I struggled, because my voice was all over the place: I couldn't sing. Some hymns I sang in my chest voice but my range is so limited there, I kept switching back to head voice but my voice kept dropping out and skipping and being generally unwieldy. The closing hymn was "Hail, Holy Queen" (DS1: "I've heard this one millions of times," hee! -- yes, he sang, too) and since that is neither too high nor too low I managed to squeak through it.

I wonder how my singing will be after the surgery. I have never been a really good singer, but I can sing well enough to hear when I go offkey so I can either shut up or get back on... and I love to sing, especially hymns. When I pray without music, my mind often wanders far afield. When I sing my prayers, the discipline required to stay on pitch helps me keep my mind where it needs to be, on the hymn. Maybe with more practice I won't need that extra focus, but I don't think it's so bad too use music as my crutch. But if I can't sing -- physically can't sing, as happened today, when many times nothing came out -- I don't know. Well, yes, I do know: it will make me sad.

It's perverse, really, because I know my singing has been improved by my thyroid nodule, since it changed the dynamics in my throat space. But now the nodule is impinging on everything around it, and what was once a marginal plus is now a definite negative. It has to go, and I'm sure whatever benefit my weak and reedy voice got from it will go, too. Plus, scar tissue! A entire new voice landscape to explore.

I've been off my Vitamin E for several days now, nor have I had any kind of NSAID or pain killer. If the surgeon on Monday says, "how about tomorrow?" I'll be good to go. I just want it to be over with.