First Rule of Fight Club

The shadows are long on the village green and I have not given you a blog post. So this is gonna be one of those posts where I just tell you what I did today. With pictures. Come along, won't you?

I started the day by taking Hank to his first sparring class. Funny, Hank has now been going to karate for a year. I know no more about it, truly, than I did when he began. I mean no more about, like, the deeper theory of this pursuit, and at every new stage of the activity, I'm kind of like, okay, whatever. He is having fun though. And six year-olds sparring is high-larious. It's funny, you never know how your kids will be in a new situation, but Hank turned out to be exactly what I would have predicted. I explained it to Matt, "He's not aggressive, but he is somehow, like, tough-minded." He's just hanging in there and he's not afraid. At the start of class, he turned to his little buddy, who is five years old, and said, "Max, don't take it easy on me." I died. After class he asked for pizza so I went next door and bought him a large.

Set-build day

Another biggish thing that is going on in Matron family life is that Laura has been cast in a small part in her middle school production of The Little Mermaid. OMGeez y'all, I'm surprised you didn't read this news written in the sky, she has been over the moon. She had been cautioned that it's hard for sixth graders to be cast, but she wanted to try anyway, and she did, learning a dance and singing a song. I was like, really! This is serious business! And she got in, with a few of her friends. Her part? One of the Poor Unfortunate Souls in Ursula the Sea Witch's number. That made me laugh. She is also a chef in the Les Poisson song. Thrilled, lord she was so thrilled, and I'm glad for her. Nobody can say the girl doesn't put herself out there.

Anyway, what this has meant is a rather escalating schedule of rehearsals over the last five or six weeks, and now, finally, show week is upon us, and it is all go go go until next weekend. They went around and performed at all three of the feeder elementary schools on Friday, so Hank got to see her, and now it's dress rehearsals for a few days and then six shows late this coming week. Y'all, I mean, I have never seen a middle school play on this scale. It is kind of beyond. I'll have more pics to show you what I mean, but just the costumes, set pieces, everything. And like so much at the rather plush public schools around here, it all runs on heavy, heavy parent volunteer effort. There must be fifty or sixty parents helping make this happen. I signed up to bring snacks, drive carpool, take pictures, and do makeup, and yet I'm feeling guilty that I wasn't there this morning hammering nails or something. I went today to take cast pictures and I snapped this. I'm also on call to take lots of candids during the dress rehearsals. For when the show is covered by Variety, you know. Okay I'm rambling but this has been taking up a lot of family bandwidth.

In the early evening, we all four went up to the tennis court and hit balls, then Matt and I played a set of singles, him beating me 6-3. Which surprised me, because I have been playing basically nonstop for months and months and he has been having, like, a job. I apologized to him for misunderestimating him and he was very gracious. Then we left the kids to their own devices and went out for a quick bite, and he showed me around the new offices of Blue Mammoth Games. OMG the game company boys are leaving the basement! I should have led with that! I'll tell you next time. In writing, this is what we refer to as parking on the downhill slope. xoxox