....Is always the most tiring and taxing part of the year. It means early rising and late sleep, and almost non-stop liturgies. If I'm not at one, I'm preparing for the next one. This week hasn't been to hectic though. Monday was a slow day, since I was still a little congested and sick. I was going over the chants for holy week when I noticed that I had done two very stupid things : a) I somehow forgot to include a page for Good Friday's vespers b) I used the wrong benedictus antiphon for lauds of Holy Saturday.That meant that the booklet had be to be un-bound, the new pages included and inserted, and the whole thing re-bound.
Tuesday, I spent on a fruitless quest to find the antiphons for Lauds of Easter Sunday. I found one, in a 13th century antiphonal, digital recreated Here. The other two, I can't find any online versions of the music, just the text. I really wish that Cantus included the text. I spent the rest of the time, after I had found music for the other two antiphons, writing out the long antiphon 'Haec dies' that replaces the responsory during the octave of Easter. Now I've just noticed that the staves are a little light, so I'll have to darken them with a pen.
Then I went to my Holy Week box (a large shoebox that I keep items for holy week in), and I was counting candles to make sure I had enough for all the candlesticks that will be used for Easter. I noticed a conspicuous lack of the unbleached candles I got for tenbrae. These I found on my windowsill, where the sun had been bleaching them till they turned a rather bright yellow color. So I had to go out to replace them.
Then server's practice at the church for Maundy Thursday. I've got my fingers crossed and I'm hoping that there isn't a disaster, what with so many servers being away, and three or four not showing up at practice.
Today, after lauds, I spent the morning cleaning.You know, spring cleaning. Can't enter Easter with a dirty house. I saw that one of the mirrors in the house looked a bit smudged, so I went over it with a soft cloth to polish it.Somehow, that made it worse, and now the whole thing is covered in large, white streaks.
After cleaning, I said terce, then got the flowers I had stored away for easter. I went for the general white and yellow stuff, with some blue mixed in. I had gotten reddish-colored poppies and some orange forsythia, but they looked wrong so I canned them.
Ginger was good today, and put up with me constantly moving her out of the way to clean things, which isn't usually like her. Usually, she growls and refuses to move until I give up.(Which I usually do.) Dahlia, my brother's new cat, however, wasn't cooperative. I'm pretty sure she tried to trip me on purpose at least three times while I was sweeping the stairs.
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