The One Where I Joined A Choir

I have always loved to sing. According to legend (my mom) I sang before I really talked. Starting around age 7 or 8, I wanted to be either this lady:

Or this one:

I would literally pray before I went to sleep at night that I would wake up with their curly hair. Literally. Prayers were said. Needless to say, it didn't happen. However, I am still obsessed with their 90s tunes. Not a lot compares to 90s Mariah and 80s/90s Whitney. Don't EVEN lie and tell me you don't sing along every time you are listening to Delilah and she plays "I'll Be There" from Mariah's MTV Unplugged set. Don't even try. I know you are lying.

So, anyway, I sang in choirs from elementary school up to college when I had to stop due to the song choices the choir director made (was forced to make?). After college, I took voice lessons just for fun during grad school, but those are expensive so once I no longer had my student loans to fund such adventures, I had to stop singing again. Until last Tuesday. When I became one of the D'Vines of Rancho Cucamonga, California.

I am a busy person. I don't like not having stuff to do, and I was getting restless not having a creative outlet of some sort, so a couple weeks ago I was perusing the city website for community classes in photography and came across the D'Vines, an all-women, no audition necessary, community choir. I'm pretty sure my eyes literally lit up when I saw this as an option. And rehearsals for the season hadn't started yet. Perfect. I paid my fee, and waited eagerly for the first meeting.

And it did NOT disappoint. It is me, a girl in high school, and about 14 ladies who have many, many more moons of life experience under their belts than I. We're talking a LOT of orthopedic sandals here, folks. But it's just so much FUN. Since it's a community choir, it's not all serious like high school choir and it's all women. Sisterhood, sisters doin' it for themselves, sisterhood of the traveling pants, d'vine secrets of the ya-ya sisterhood (see what I did there?)... basically, this:

Our theme for this season's concert is "girl groups" but we're working with a loose interpretation of this theme since one of the songs is The Rose by Bette Midler (the director proclaimed Bette to be a group unto herself) and another song is The Star Spangled Banner (...). At any rate, it's a fun 2 hours to sing out with you bling out (I came up with that just now... also, I don't have any bling, so that hardly applies to me).  

And don't worry - my friends have all promised to attend our final concert and document accordingly, so stay tuned for updates. I don't know if it'll be as awesome as this...

But I sure will try to get us there! It has always been a dream of mine to inspire overall-bedecked youths with the power of song... Also, mad props and shoutout to Sister Mary Patrick! God, I love her!