Life in the Fast Lane

Now we head into almost 2 weeks solid of rehearsal. I have breaks this coming Tuesday night, and Thursday night. But that’s it until October 5. The play is going reasonably well… A little behind schedule for my comfort level as a director, but as no one else seems particularly bothered by this I’m not stressing about it. I know that I’ll learn the dances JUST in time as I always do, and it will go fine. My characters are fun, and the music is great, and the other actors are very strong. I don’t think there’s a weak one among us, and that makes me happy.

Pray for Jerry for patience and stamina with the girls as he’s the Solo Daddy during all of these rehearsals, and pray for the girls that they will be angels for him. Alice is regressing in her potty-training efforts because I’m gone so much; she is SUCH a mama’s girl. When I’m home, I make her wear Pull-ups because I’m tired of all of the laundry. She doesn’t like it. But my life is easier because of it. We’ll figure it out again later. I’m trying not to be angry about it, because I know it’s just a stress response — she was doing fine until all of the rehearsals started.

I picked up more tutoring students this week, which meant that I was able to afford the Ultimate Indulgence: Merry Maids came yesterday and made our home livable, and they’ll come again on closing day of the show. I LOVED the ladies that came yesterday. Totally the kind of women I’d like to go out for a beer with sometime. When I said that to them, they both said, “AMENNNN, SISTERRRRR!” There was lots of laughing and joy in this house yesterday. They will come every other week for a while, unless we can’t keep up with that and then they’ll come every week. It’ll take about a month or so for our house to be “party ready” but now at least I won’t be mortified if someone drops by. That’s a huge blessing.

When the show is over, I’ll decompress for a few days and then drive to Virginia with the girls for Fall Break (October 8-12) so that we can visit my grandmother (Nana, for whom Helen is partially named), since I haven’t seen her since Alice was an infant and Nana is 94 years old now. I’m looking forward to the trip, which will be a stop-and-smell-the-roses trip. We’ll go to the Knoxville Zoo on the way up, and hopefully visit with some ScrapShare friends as well. We have to be back in Huntsville on the 13th, because Helen sings in church with the Cherub Choir on the 14th and the girls have tickets to a play on that Sunday evening.

Then it’s a race to the finish to complete 2 more quilts for the quilt show the weekend of the 19th… They’re both a long way from being done, but I’m going to see how much progress I can make… If I can get them both to the handwork stage, then I’ll be able to take them to Virginia and work on them after the girls go to bed at night. Any embellishments I get completed will be a bonus; my main thing is to get them worthy of hanging at the show. They’re not TOO far from that, so it’s all good. I don’t expect to win anything anyway, since this is the first year I’m having to enter in the “Professional” category since I’ve sold several purses and a commissioned quilt now. I just want the quilts finished. The Halloween quilt in particular, since I’d love to be able to hang it in our dining room this year. It’s such a silly quilt. I did some cool quilting on it last night — it glows in the dark! Yay!

After the quilt show, I have about 10 days off in which to prepare to go to ScrapShare Texas IV, from November 1-5. This means streamlining my scrapbook necessities so that they’ll reasonably fit in a manageable suitcase, with space (and available weight) for more acquisitions while I’m down there. I don’t have an easy time packing lightly, so this was an interesting challenge last year. I plan to do even better this year, and I’m confident that I can do it.

Then my life should finally return to a normal pace after the first week of November. But the next 7 weeks or so will be quite intense around here.

Thank God for Merry Maids.