HELL WEEK!

Ah, you know it's gonna be a good week when it already has a name like "Hell Week."

For those of you who don't do theater, "hell week" is the final week of rehearsals - we rehearse every night, for 5+ hours, work in all technical aspects of the show previously unrehearsed, work in the musicians, and generally have a slew of nervous breakdowns until were are trembling shadows of our former selves by show night. Whee! Show biz!

To give you an idea of how we are feeling as we go into today's 10+ hour rehearsal, my music director and I have dubbed this week - "Hell Week - With 25% more Hell!"

Yay.

Directing a show with a 28-person adult cast and 15-person children's chorus has been - something else. Gratifying, nervewracking, scary, exciting, fulfilling, combative - just a handful of adjectives out of many more I could think up - if my brain wasn't mush.

On top of it all, I'm fairly sure I have bronchitis, or something close to it. Also, my mom-guilt will explode this week since the only time I will see Jane is in the mornings, before I head off to work.

Why do I do this? This is a question that is asked of me often, and that I ask myself every day. I'll answer it on the flip side.

Have a great week! And if you in the CT area, you better be at the show!

cuteness, defined.

I am in chaotic chaos-ridden chaos-ity with my show right now. So instead of actually blogging like a real blogger would, I would like to share these two FRAKKIN CUTE pics of Jane. I didn't even take them; my friend Todd did at our Fourth of July extravaganza. See how patriotic Jane is, in her Nova Scotia t-shirt, given to her by Todd and her Canadianfather, Alan. (Alan is Jane's Canadianfather because she is 1/something French Canadian, and Alan is Canadian by way of his motherland, Nova Scotia. So he is in charge of teaching her all the wonderful things about Canada. In fact, the guests at our party played an impromptu game of "Better Know a Canadian" starring Alan, where they berated him with questions like "are you ever going to become an American citizen" and "when you came to American and had ham for the first time, were you surprised?")

So, um, anyway, here are some pics. I promise to be less scatterbrained in a couple of weeks. (don't hold your breath.) (as if you were.)

birthday. missed.

Today is my father’s birthday. He died nine and a half years ago, and I cannot believe how much my life has transformed in those years. He knew me as a mid-20-something who had finally established herself as a journalist and got her ass out of the house only a couple of years before. He knew me as someone who was struggling with my weight, and who had just finally started to shed a significant number of pounds through diet and exercise. He knew me as someone who had just started up a relationship after several years of single life. He knew me in my carefree, young days. I have not achieved that carefree mindset since the day he died. I may have technically been an adult already, but I really grew up that day.



He will never know me as someone who left journalism because I didn’t want to miss out on my life. He will never know that he inspired that. He will never know me as a fiancé, a wife, a dog owner, and most painfully, a mother. He will never meet Jane, and see how she has inherited the [maiden name] unibrow. I search for the [maiden name] in Jane; because she looks so much like Greg, it’s hard to see it. But I think her dramatic personality show signs of her Italian side.
It has been so long that days like these are nowhere near as painful as they used to be. But as my life grows and expands, it still cuts deep that he will never know me, as I am now.


Happy Birthday, Dad.

holiday, celebrate

Today is Red, White and Blue Day at daycare

So things are a bit intense 'round these parts. Let me bulletpoint what the next several weeks look like:

*We are hosting a Fourth of July party on Saturday that requires us to remove the remnants of last weekend's ALMOST-PRACTICALLY-SOCLOSE TORNADO EVENT OF THE CENTURY, clean the house, buy stuff to eat, try to not to kill each other and celebrate all of the joyousness of the U.S. of A. I am looking forward to the party - the prep, not so much. Oh, also? We are all sick.

*I am two weeks away from my show, which means in the next week, we have to block any scenes we have missed so far (hint: there are a bunch) and then make the show so its running time is not six-and-a-half days long. Next weekend begins the much-anticipated and always Xanax-necessary Hell Week, when we move the show to the acutal auditorium where we will be performing and everything goes to shit. We will rehearse for many long hours every night the week of the 12th, and then that weekend is the show. And then I collapse and die in a blaze of glory.

*If I don't collapse and die, then Jane's birthday is looming, and preparations must begin for her SECOND BIRTHDAY BLOWOUT EXTRAVAGANZA the weekend of the 25th. Everyone keeps asking me what the theme of her birthday is. I don't know, how about, um, "Jane is Two"? Does that work?

Have a great holiday and don't blow your hands off with any fireworks! Rumor has it Noah and his ark might be able to dock this weekend because the weather is supposed to be OK - ha! - I'll believe it when I see it.

we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto

So, the other day, let's call it "Friday," I was gearing up for the weekend. I had just gotten my hair cut, and I stopped at home to pick up some things before I went down to the boat to stay overnight. Greg, Jane and the dogs were already down there. I got home at about 4:15 p.m., and probably would have left at around 4:25 - except it started raining. Really, really hard. So I figured I'd just wait it out (didn't want to ruin my fresh, new 'do, ya know).

And then the rain kept coming. And then it turned to golf ball-sized hail. And then the wind whipped to what reports say was about 80 mph. The power went out. A tree went down in my front yard. And the wind was shaking the windows in my house, and the hail was pelting against the windows, and I, for the first time ever in a storm, was scared shitless. I didn't know what to do.

So, naturally, I grabbed my camera and opened the front door, so I could get some pics. And then I heard it. That weird, train-like noise that I recognized from the movie Twister. So I shut the door, and instead of going to the basement - LIKE EVERYONE KNOWS YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO DO - I stood there. In front of my kitchen window. Too scared to move.

After about 20 minutes - a very, very long 20 minutes - the storm subsided to just rain. So I went outside, and holy crap, the carnage. Trees - big ass trees - down everywhere. Looked like they were plucked from the ground like weeds. I was trapped, because there were six trees across my road alone - four on one side and two on the other - never mind all the trees and bushes down in people's yards. My neighbor's shutters look like lace - the hail must've pounded the little holes in them. Someone's roof was partially knocked down. The fire department cruised by, saying in their megaphone, "Is everyone OK?" I walked around, taking pictures of everything, talking to neighbors I've never talked to in my life. It was surreal.

Part of my road was cleared out by Saturday morning, so I was able to make it down to the boat, and it's a good thing, because the power didn't come back on until Sunday morning. We were lucky to have somewhere else to stay.

It wasn't a tornado, although a nearby town did experience an actual tornado. But I think it was about as close as it could come. We're still picking up the mess. The landscape of my whole neighborhood looks different.

Eight Minus Jon & Kate

I am interrupting my regularly-scheduled vacation recap (and, seriously, who is lamer than I for not uploading the pics and posting them? I mean, it's not like I was traveling anywhere. But that vacation left me 100% exhausted. And now I'm a bit more than three weeks from my show, so that has become my all-consuming obsession.) (But I promise I will post pics from this weekend. At some point.)

Anyway, I just want to quickly touch on this Jon and Kate Gosselin crap. Look, I used to watch the show all the time. When I first had Jane, I got hooked on all sorts of baby-style shows, the majority being on channels like TLC and Discovery Health. After a while they become boring to me again, but I still recorded J&K, and sometimes just watched it as background noise.

Of course, I have become completely obsessed with the dramatic, in-your-face unraveling of their marriage. It's like a train wreck. I feel so badly for staring, but I just can't help myself. My friends and I all say the same thing - WHY DON'T THEY QUIT THE SHOW TO SAVE THE MARRIAGE?

I think they found themselves in a trap. When they first had that gaggle of kids, they had no money and relied heavily on donations. They finally saw the money coming in, and slowly but surely became reality TV stars, and lived liked celebrities - huge house, free trips, free surgeries - everything. So, if they quit the show to save themselves, they would be back to having no money - no financial insurance for all of those college educations. But as things got uglier and uglier you would think they would choose family over TV and the $$$. Instead, they are using their gross family drama to keep that steady flow of paychecks coming.

So, as it turns out, Jon is the one who told Kate he wanted a divorce. And people will applaud him for finally standing up for himself. But wouldn't it be better for him to stand up for himself within the marriage? And Kate - oh Kate - I was horrified to read that you told People how you told your children about the impending divorce. Such private, private family stuff. It's NONE OF OUR BUSINESS. NONE.

I am relieved that TLC isn't airing new eps until August. Will I tune in? Yes. Will I hate myself for it? Kind of. Mostly I just want those poor kids to be OK. And it might not be a bad idea for J&K to watch some older episodes - back when it was a feel-good, bland, vanilla family show. They loved each other. They had fun together. They weren't fame whores.

Just a thought.

RAIN! I mean, VACATION!

Coffee at Au Bon Pain on a rainy morning

My posse ready to lose their collective minds on another rainy day

Jane making music with her buddy Griffin

Greg driving with his sidekick, Jimmy

Me and Jane with my sisters at DQ

So, um, this rain? Sucks. But the vacation rages on. Thursday it absolutely poured all day. Jane and I spent another quality morning at the mall, except this time, instead of walking around on her own, meeting and greeting all the old mall walkers, she decided that rather than walking or riding in the stroller, she would pitch major fits and throw dramatic tantrums every time I had to put her down (carrying a 30 lb child and pushing a stroller at the same time = NOT FUN). We also went to my cousin's house to visit her and her three (THREE!) kids. I was lucky to escape the madness on Thursday evening to go to rehearsal.

Friday - guess what? More rain. Awesome. We went my friend Cheryl's house to hang with her and her son Griffin, who is less than two weeks younger than Jane. That kid has mad verbal skillz though - he said to me at one point, "this balloon has no helium." Seriously! He's not even two! It was really fun to see them, and Jane had a blast playing with more toys that aren't hers. Later we went to Dairy Queen to see my sisters (one of my sisters owns it, the other works there. I put many years into DQ myself, when my parents owned it.). Because I haven't been feeling well, Greg took Jane home and I went off to get a pedicure and read the gossip mags at Barnes and Noble. I must say that was pretty fabulous. Also, it stopped raining for a little bit!

Vacation report to conclude tomorrow. Here's a preview - RAIN!