I woke up verrrrrry late this morning (late, at least, for me), and the first thing that ran through my mind was, Now, what did he say? I vaguely remember Eric standing over my sleeping form before he headed off to work, kissing my cheek, and saying, "Now remember to..." He obviously wanted me to do something today, but for the life of me, I can't recall what. He should really learn to just leave notes if he wants to tell me something in the morning.

I'm not certain how I even remember to take my temperature every morning. I'm just that foggy when I first wake up.

Speaking of temperatures, they're not rising. I'm just not patient enough to put up with this kind of long cycle. Somebody on one of my mailing lists suggested that I take Vitex to help regulate ovulation. I'm not that far gone yet, am I? Is this a step I need to take yet? I don't think so, but my frustration level is rising beyond tolerance. I'm starting to worry now about waking up to find Aunt Flo, here without the benefit of my ovulating. I'm on day 28, after all.

Now, I won't say Eric's wrong. He's just not right. I won't get into the composer's actual error here, since it's a moot point and nobody but a few of us theory geeks would find it interesting anyway, but let's just say that had a student in my Choral Arranging class at grad school turned in an example such as this, both I and the professor would have marked off points. I guess we're just more strict than my husband.

Anyway, for whatever reason, Eric and I couldn't just let it drop last night. He began combing the hymnal for other examples of just such a musical line. I told him that regardless of who else may have made the part-writing error, it still was ineffective writing. Our voices got louder, and we both got angrier. We were starting to trade credentials:

"I wrote that very line for Dr. Crotty, and he marked it correct!"
"Well, Dr. De Pue publicly bashed his students for lines like that! I watched him scrawl all over assignments with red magic marker!"
"Dr. Crotty is a theory genious!"
"Nobody's knows the rules like Dr. De Pue, and he says it's wrong!"

Other choir members were staring, and I heard one of them say, "Sounds like a marital problem." The funny part is, she was right. Eric and I have widely differing views on music. He's a neo-baroque composer, which basically means his music sounds like a cross between a Bach invention and the soundtrack to Tron. My own influences are the lush harmonies like those of Brahms and late Beethoven, mixed with the mathematical considerations of Bartok and Berg. Go listen to the soundtrack to Altered States, and you'll know something of my style. Eric is ancient Japanese haiku; I'm an ode by Mallarmé.

At the moment, though, we were both mud wrestlers. Nobody in the room, with the exception of the choir director, was understanding a word of the jargon now spewing from our mouths: "Unresolved dissonance! Legal voice exchange! Skipping from the leading tone! Palestrina would roll in his grave!!!"

Later, in the car on the way home, we calmed down. Eric admitted that the line could have been written more effectively, and I agreed that the fact that it was "only" the alto part mitigated the problem. Besides, we concluded, there were much more important things to consider: the last song we worked on ended with the Latin word "pacem" repeatedly sung as pa-CEM, pa-CEM. Oh, the humanity!

Maybe I should go out and buy them some more carrots. Would that be spoiling them? It's difficult to even walk through the living room past their hutch, because the moment they see me, they begin their pititful cries for "the tasty orange things that go 'crunch!'" It's heartbreaking, I tell you! Hey, maybe that was what Eric wanted me to do today. Maybe the crying got to him this morning when he was getting ready for work.

Ah, I could use the fresh air. I guess I can put up with the snow (I guess it was too much to hope that the weather would stay warm enough for me to be able to spend time outside) and get out to the grocery store. We need some more soda, anyway.