Ho Ho Hot Mess

Hey, y'all -

We've made it a month without your dad. I'm proud of us. I put a lazy Susan on our dinner table with a little tripod for my phone so we can video call him at dinnertime and whirl him around so he can see everybody. I haven't been sleeping well, because you people want to sleep in the bed with me. When I occasionally say yes - because who doesn't like snuggling? - I immediately regret it, because y'all both have this habit of sleeping sideways and kicking and Laney likes to exorcise whatever emotional demons are left over from the day in her sleep and I'm often jerked awake at 2 a.m. by a shouted: "BUT THOSE ARE MY PENCILS, MARIAH!!!!!"  I have no idea who Mariah is, but I hope she returned your damn pencils. 

I had a brain-overload moment the other day when I was thinking about a work project that I hadn't finished, and the homework I needed to do with Laney, and worrying about Hagen walking around pretending to be a Pokemon all the time and wondering how I was ever going to make a dinner that all three of us would want to eat. And then I looked down and realized that as I was getting our meal plated up, I had accidentally poured two kiddie juice glasses of Chardonnay for y'all. Mom's losing it! Early bedtime for everyone!

Yesterday, Laney's drama club at school presented their play, and I took Hagen because I'm a single parent and I had no choice he promised to be a quiet and attentive audience member. 

When I was a drama major at UVa, I had a friend Jack who was a graduate instructor, and he had this running joke about what you could say to a friend who was in a play that was a real stinker. Basically, you have to clap enthusiastically and shout factual statements like "Woo, you were IN THAT PLAY!" or "Man! You were UP ON THAT STAGE!" So, Laney, with all the love in my heart, I can say: "There was a play! And you WORE THAT DRESS!! And girl, you SAID THOSE LINES!!"

The play's relative quality had nothing to do with you. But here's what it was like, for those who couldn't attend:

The six girls in the drama club got to scrounge around the costume closet and pick whatever they wanted to wear, even if it made no sense for this production of "Little Red Riding Hood." Hence, Little Red's mother looking like Jennifer Grey in the finale of Dirty Dancing, and you - Little Red's grandmother - looking like a Wednesday night clog dancer at the Opry.  

One girl (in blue, above) decided she wanted to play the role of "Snow." So she wadded up a bunch of white trash and stuffed it in a Priority Mail envelope. During the show, whenever her artistic internal clock told her it should be snowing, she'd reach into her little cardboard envelope, grab some paper scraps and throw them on the floor. She never announced "It's snowing!" but as an audience, we could feel it.  "Girl, you were UP THERE ON THAT STAGE, MAKING THAT SNOW HAPPEN!"

Let me tell you the best part of the show...this guy:

As the narrator read her lines ("Girl, you were READING that paper!") there was a moment when she said, "But it turned out it WASN'T Little Red's grandmother! It was a wolf!"

...And Hagen, in the audience, out loud, said "Dun dun dun!!!" like he was the vaudeville soundtrack. 

After the wolf "ate" Grandma, Laney crawled under the table to indicate being inside the wolf, and Hagen said, "Hi Laney! Good job in the play Laney!" And y'all waved to each other. No one seemed to care that you had broken the fourth wall. We were all still trying to decipher the meaning of the garbage on the floor (we didn't learn it was snow 'til curtain call).

You were great. You knew your lines, and you wore the hell out of that Appalachian pageant dress. 

Wish I'd brought one of those juice glasses of Chardonnay. 

Love,

Mom