"Thank you dear Lord for my left shoe"

Contest Day

Our morning was very relaxing. We got up, and since the only thing we had was cheese and crackers to eat, we grabbed ourselves a few of those. (I had forgotten to mention that that was the only thing, minus a barbeque joint, that we ate all weekend. I don't think I'll ever look at a packaged cheese and cracker the same again.)

Anyway, we did some warming up, so that we could be prepared for that evening. Everybody showered and got ready to go over to the college so we could warm up over there and get our costumes and make up on.

We had decided that it would be best if we were ready about an hour before we needed to actually leave. Who knows why we decided this, but I sure glad we did because the story that follows will knock your shoe off.

Everyone was ready. Dee had her suit and shoes on, Meagan had her suit and shoes on, I had my suit and shoes on, and Sherida had her suit and only one shoe in her hand. You'd think in a moment like that you would panic a little. We didn't really. We looked everywhere in that dorm room and everytime we counted we came up with seven. Seven shoes just won't do. We almost decided to go out onstage barefoot, but then thought that probably wasn't a very good idea. With about 50 minutes before we had to be in our "pattern" we dropped Dee off at our hotel to look for the divergant shoe and then the rest of use drove to Payless.

Let's recap. Dee, Meagan, Sherida and I all had on blue skirt suits with a silver sparkly top. Our hair was poofed out to perfection and we had on more make up than any of would ever dream of wearing in public. Ok, let's continue...

So, Jen, Meagan, Sherida, and I ran into Payless on a frantic shoe search. I can only imagine what those other people in the store must have been thinking. Finding fours pairs of shoes in all of the right sizes was going to be a tough task, but we were totally prepared to destroy that store in search of some shoes. Fortunately, Dee found in the hotel room, hiding, under the bed.

All of a sudden I heard Jen yell, "She got the shoe, she got the shoe!!"

The four of us ran out of that store like we stole something, and went and got Dee and the wayward shoe. On the way back to the campus we heard singing in the backseat.

"Thank you dear Lord for my left shoe..." sang Sherida.

This would be funny if you knew the song "Thank You Dear Lord For Music".

Anyway, we ended up being early for our pattern, which was pretty much a miracle, considering we didn't know our way around San Antonio very well and we only had an hour.

Our set went fabulously. We all felt pretty relaxed, well, as relaxed as one can feel on stage, and when we got off stage we felt good about what we did. Now all we had to do was wait. And, these Sweet Adeline ladies like to draw things out. We went 5th out of 18 or so and then we had to wait on the judges to tally up all the scores and then they had to thank the judges and their children and their bosses and all of the choruses for being there and all the quartets for doing a great job.

When they finally rolled around to calling out the top 5 we were quite ready. Well, folks, I just like to thank you for sitting here and reading this, and I'd like to thank the judges for being there, and I'd like to thank the judges children for being wherever, and I like to thank my boss for letting me off work so I could be there, and I'd like to thank some of those choruses who listened to us, and I'd like to thank all of the quartets for competing so that there could be a competition.

Last Minute came in 5th at an international competition, and we got a shiny medal to wear around our necks. It was a fantastic night, and we all slept in our medals, except for Meagan who forgot because she was took a shower and didn't put it back on, but we're not bitter.

The next day we played in a fountain, and then went to watch the chorus competition and the chorus from our area won they're division and came second place over all. It was a very good weekend for Region 23.

On Sunday, we drove back to Nashville and it was the most fun I've had on a road trip in a while, and I can't remember anything of consequence that happened on the way.

13 hours isn't so bad.