It really felt good to be back at the parish today. I had the 10:00 a.m. and 12:00 Noon Masses. No real difficulties except for my voice.
First of all, my sinuses/allergies have been bothering me. This is “that time of the year.” But the biggest contributing factor to having a hoarse voice by the end of the Noon Mass was something that just came to me: I’m retired.
Yeah. Retired. That means that I’m not at work anymore. That means that I don’t associate with people as much as I used to. In other words, I don’t talk so much.
Now that I’m living by myself and don’t have daily dealings with people, I don’t use my voice. Oh, maybe I’ll be on the phone for a while with my brother or some friends, but that’s not always and it’s not “at volume”. But speaking in the church for two Masses, I found my throat and vocal cords saying to me, “What the heck are you doing?! You don’t talk anymore.” 🙂
So, I’ll see what happens tomorrow morning when I go in for the 8:30 a.m. Mass. It’s just good seeing parishioners that I haven’t seen since the end of June.