ants in the pants

I'm feeling antsy about the blog. Now that Jane is two, I am a bit more hesitant to write about her, and especially to post pictures of her - now that she's less baby and more (godhelpme) kid. I took her for her 2-year checkup today - and she's weighing in at a sturdy 27 lbs, 4 oz, and standing at a tall 34 inches. If it's true that at two years old you are half your adult height, that means she will be 5'8". I have no idea if that's true, but if it is, she will be significantly taller than me. And then how am I supposed to carry her around on my hip?

So if I wean myself off of blogging about Jane - what the hell else am I supposed to talk about? Anything anyone want to know?

July has kicked my ass

This month is out of control. I realized today that my past four weekends have been intensely busy. To wit:

First weekend - Fourth of July party hosted at our house
Second weekend - Hell week begins for my show
Third weekend - My show, plus volunteered for Petit Family Foundation 5K race (at 6:30 a.m. mind you, after going to bed at 2 post-cast party), with a kid's birthday party thrown in there for good measure
Fourth weekend - Jane's birthday party extravaganza at our house

I'm utterly exhausted. Who does this to themselves? So forgive me if my vacation recap is bulletpointy.

Monday - Went to the beach with my friend Heather. I was drooling and pretty much comatose the whole time. It was fabulous.
Tuesday - It rained like a bitch, and Jane and I were similarly bitchy. Not a great day.
Wednesday - Went down to the boat. Good weather, went swimming in the pool, had fun.
Thursday - Jane's birthday. We went to Newport for the day, had a pretty awesome time.
Friday - Party prep.
Saturday - Party. Holy shitballs, people. I had 42 people in my house, and over a third of them were very small. It took me over two hours to clean the carnage up after.
Sunday - Went to an Italian Festival with my mom and Jane. Ate fried dough. Yum.

I am pretty bummed that my last staycation of the summer is over. I don't have anymore significant time off until Christmas, and that makes me sad. But it will be nice to just go to work and then get to go home, instead of having to rush off to rehearsals. As much as I found the show to be a worthwhile experience, I DO NOT miss the (self-imposed) schedule.

The End.

two.

If we didn't have birthdays, you wouldn't be you.

If you'd never been born, well then what would you do?

If you'd never been born, well then what would you be?

You might be a fish! Or a toad in a tree!

You might be a doorknob! Or three baked potatoes!

You might be a bag full of hard green tomatoes.

Or worse than all that...Why, you might be a WASN'T!

A Wasn't has no fun at all. No, he doesn't.

A Wasn't just isn't. He just isn't present.

But you...You ARE YOU! And, now isn't that pleasant!

~Dr. Seuss

ok, ok, one more video, that's it, I promise

remember me?

Dudes. I am STILL TIRED from the past week. The show went really well; hell week was utterly exhausting, emotionally and physically. I am literally achy from still being tired. Luckily I have this week off. I went to the beach today and sent Jane along to daycare; she and I will be staycationing it for the rest of the week. But I leave you with this scene from the show, so you can see what it is I have been doing. More news later.

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.