Booo!

"There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin.”

―Linus Van Pelt

I will be waiting for kindred spirits tomorrow night in the most sincere pumpkin patch, admiring the glow of Patrick's jack-o-lantern, and stealing all the Kit Kats from my daughters' treat bags.

For today, though, I must endure the insanity that is middle school on the day before Halloween. Plumbers don't likely fear this day like I do.

Brain Lint

I didn't meet my writing goal this week, which was for every other day for October and November. I officially forgive myself. Onward...

Another one of those nights full of random brain-lint...

I had rehearsal tonight, but when I got home, even though it was past their bedtime, I still watched Winnie the Pooh and the Halloween Heffalump (or something like that) with the girls. In the fall, there are three nights a week when I can't put the girls to bed, and I miss it. I miss them, and the quiet, flannel-pajama-clad snuggle time at the end of a busy day. I try to make up for it by watching Rudolph and Frosty a gazillion times in December, but right now, in the heart of my busy musical-directing season, that all seems so far off.

I got to spend two whole days with Craig this week, which was amazing. He can make me laugh till the wine snorts out of my nose. He is also an expert at crossword puzzles, card-tricks, speedy word-origin locations, touching the lights in my classroom (which rocks my sixth graders' worlds) and making me confront myself. In the best way. I am grateful for what we have recently realized is a nineteen-year-old friendship this December. I first met him pirouetting through a Greenough Hallway at UMass when I was hanging out with Pete, prepping for our Into the Woods audition. A half hour later, we were singing songs from Evita at the top of our lungs. It was love at first sight, and we've been friends ever since.

I also got to spend two whole days with Elise this weekend, visiting our favorite spots in the Pioneer Valley. We walked around UMass, peered into the Guild Office, shopped at Yankee Candle, bought bagels at People's Market, ordered Panda East Chinese Food into our hotel room, drank wine and Talked About Boys. It was the completely replenishing Fall weekend that we both so desperately needed, right smack now.

My show is coming along well, despite the various stresses that we've had in the process. On Tuesday we had one of those bumpy rehearsals where nothing was in the flow, everyone's energy was scattered, and nothing good was growing. I just sent them all home. Not crankily, but with the knowledge that whatever was tugging at them that night was more important than being there, running those scenes. And that's okay. Sometimes you've just got to listen to the group and go with it. As of now, we're in good enough shape to allow for that.

Halloween is just around the corner, and the girls are so excited. Amelia is being a Sorceress (not a witch...and yes, there's a big, magical difference), and Abby is being Penny from Hairspray. (Pulled THAT costume out of my ass.) In the afternoon, we're meeting my great big gang of friends and their kids to take the same portrait that we've taken for the past nine years - kids in their costumes, props askew, faces looking this way and that, but a portrait of a moment in time. The photo has gotten bigger as our little Chosen Family has, and we never quite know how they'll turn out. It's an adventure, though, and we warn the photographer in advance that the best shot will likely be the first, and no, we don't expect them all to be smiling at the same time, and yes, one or more will be crawling out of the shot at any given moment so just hurry up and TAKE THE DAMNED PICTURE! It's madness. It's perfect.

Many, many showings at our house these past two weeks. Someone has to want our sweet little farmhouse! I just don't know how they possibly could not.

I'm living hard right now, from the second I open my eyes at 6 a.m. till I finally get my sweats on at the 9:00. It's all for good, but I'm tired.

A Word of Caution to our Neighbors

Dear People Staying Next Door to Us at the Campus Center Hotel,

I know there’s a Jay-Z concert tonight. I know that we are at UMass, affectionately known, still, as Zoo-Mass. I know we’re a couple of mom-age-ladies drinking chardonnay and eating Chinese food in our hotel room, in our pajamas, at 7:30. Yes, we’re scrolling our Facebook pages and talking about Boys while 60 Minutes plays in the background. Our party plans for tonight consist of a second bottle of wine and some cleansing face masks, if we get really crazy. You’ve headed out to your concert, and all’s quiet now.

BUT…If you come back from this Mullins Center Jay-Z concert and continue to blast your music, I swear to goddess, I will Karen Carpenter your ass into next Tuesday. Elise has her iPod and she is not afraid to use it. Jay-Z us and we will “Sing, Sing a Song” you at 6:00 a.m, which is when our sassy-mom bodyclocks are set for.

Sincerely,

The Girls Next Door

The Mighty Pen

I am feeling so snap-crackle-poppishly full of epiphanies. I’m not sure where to start.

First, I felt reminded today that I HAVE to write. I’m having a surge of renewal of that truth today. What IS that? I actually don’t quite know. I have never quite known, but I do know that it is a strange sort of compulsion. Maybe we all have our compulsions, some worse than this one. I don’t know. I do know that nothing is ever real for me until I write it down. Nothing happens to me that goes unexamined by my pen. And I can’t think freely until I empty the noise from me with writing...just as it is with the Burning Ritual. I have to release my thoughts onto paper sometimes, even if they are temporary. Even if they are a tiny glimpse into my mind on the hop. I may totally disagree tomorrow, but here is where I am right smack now.

Sean and I were talking tonight about the concept of addiction. The only addition I can be certain of in my life is an addiction to writing. I am paralyzed without it. I am the girl laying in gray pajamas under dirty bedsheets watching the world with plaintive violin music in the background. It’s a dark place, and I’ve been there. But I learned that I have the power to draw myself out of that dark place, no matter how you got there, and that it was no one else's job to do it for you. You are built of the strong stuff. I sometimes regret the ease of my daughters' childhoods, because how am I ever to teach that to them? How do they learn fortitude?

I have more to say on that topic, but it's a subject for another day. For now, back to writing. Why I need it. I know it’s because it’s how I sorted through so much as a child. I am a very resilient person. Shit happened to me, the kinds of stuff they write self-help books to give you coping skill for. But I listened to my mother. “You gotta be hearty. A lot can happen to a body in this world. You gotta be hearty.” If I have inheirited any of that grit, I am profoundly grateful. If I have honed any of it in my life, practiced it, it’s only been because I could write my way from one end of it to the other.

I’m not alone. I’m not unique. Everyone has shit happen to them, and so very many of them way worse than me. But I am sensitive. And the big things that happened were deeply formulative then, as the big things that happen now continually shape who I am becoming. I live an overexamined life now. Imagine how deeply I studied my journey back then, when journaling, and listening to original cast Broadway albums, were really all I had to do.

This blog is very exhilarating for me. I don’t know exactly who is reading it, and I don’t need you to tell me if you don’t want to. But every once in a while, particularly recently, I’ve encountered people who confess to me, somewhat sheepishly, “I read your blog.” I swear, you couldn’t give me a more meaningful compliment. It’s wrapped in sparkly tissue and smells like those cinnamon pine cones at the Christmas Tree Shop. I have so often wondered if what is in my head is remotely worth reading to anyone else. It’s so worth it to me just to say it, but I wonder if it’s worth anyone’s nine minutes every few days. I just know that it’s loosening things up in me, and giving me confidence and enthusiasm and energy and propulsion. That’s a very high-energy-vibration way to be.

I like it here. Thanks for hanging with me. I would totally mix you a Fauxmopolitan if I could.

Overheard

A real live quote from Abby in the car last night, while discussing whether or not actual fairies might come to her fairy-themed birthday party...next July.

"If I closed my eyes, and then opened them to see Buttercup Fairy sitting right on my lap, I would scream so loud and so joyfully that no one in the whole wide world would be able to stay asleep."

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Don't even say it. I know it's not even Halloween yet. I try very hard to keep a lid on myself until at least then. I don't even sneak the Christmas music until at least the beginning of November, and I don't allow myself the first Christmas movie until Pajama Done Day after my musical is over. (Always Elf. Smilings my favorite!)

Somehow, though, this year, I'm having a lot of trouble with that. I'm already thinking about Chrsitmas way too much. Every time I scroll down the list of albums in my school computer to find something new-agey to play while the kids are writing, I keep seeing sparkly little Kristin Chenoweth looking out at me from under the mistletoe. I know that both of my favorite Christmas songs, "Do You Hear What I Hear" AND "The Christmas Waltz" are on that album, and it's full of the sound of giggles and the smell of cocoa. She taunts me in her turtleneck sweater but I've held off so far.

I really don't know how much longer it will last.

Last Sunday morning, I went to Target alone at 8:00 a.m. to get a rug for our bathroom. I wandered by the movie section, and there, right there, were all of the Christmas DVDs. I burst into tears right smack then, texted a picture to Andrea, and hummed all the way out of the store. I totally almost bought a Hallmark Hall of Fame one that I hadn't seen with the super cute guy from The Gilmore Girls and Supernatural. But I didn't. Not yet.

I know that my urgency this year has a number of factors. It's partly tied up in the fact that with this whole house-buying thing so up in the air, I'm a bit worried about where my girls will wake up on Christmas morning. It's also that things are definitely hitting that manic mid-autumn place for me where I'm totally overwhelmed with my show and the twelve-hour days and working weekends starts to take its toll. When I feel like that, and I have to go to my "Happy Place" to manage the 45 minute drive up and down route 3, I think about Christmas, and my plans, and my list...

But mostly, it's one great big simple thing. It's that I know, in my heart, that this will be the last year of Believing. At least for Amelia. Oh, she'll fake it for me, I'll bet, just like I faked it for my mom when I kind of figured it all out. And I can only hope that when she makes the big discovery, it will be a gradual understanding, like I had, rather than some traumatic earth-shattering crushing blow like other people have had. And Abby, I think, half fairy/elf herself, may go on to Believe for ever, just like I do to a certain extent. But my practical little Yankee Scrap is not quite like that. Right now, I think, she's still there, still believing, and I will hold so tightly to that for every second that I can.

I will make this Christmastime as full of magic and light and wonder as possible, despite moving, despite the other changes that might occur in all of our lives soon. It's not about "the day;" it never is. It's the whole thing...the whole season, the movies, the music, the elves, the random events with carolers and decorated trees and craft-making, velvet ribbons and colored lights...it's all of the trappings. It's the traditions and the feelings and the whole energy of Christmas. And yes, of course I know that Amelia can still cherish all of that long after the Santa part has run its course, but still...one more year. I know I've got this one more year, and I intend to make Magic.

Yeah, yeah. I know it's October. Bite me. I taste like peppermint.

Dear Sixth Grade Boy. Again.

Dear Sixth Grade Boy,

Let's talk about farts.

Sweethearts, everyone farts. It is part of life. It could happen to you, and be your Worst Day of Sixth Grade, or it could happen in the car with your friend or at Mike's slumber party. But farts happen to everyone. You don't need to pull your shirt, bandit-like, up over your mouth and nose. It doesn't prove anything. You don't have to giggle and point, and make careful noises with your chair and your sneakers and the end of your book to prove that you Totally Didn't Do It. Just jump on over it and finish making your Mesopotamia Study Guide. This moment, like so many other ones that make you want to crawl through the floor, will soon pass. I promise.

I can't promise some obnoxious classmate won't comment about in your yearbook, but it will pass. Someday, a girl will still date you. I promise.

Unless you like boys. Which is totally okay, too. I have some excellent pamphlets you can read, and I'm here if you need to talk.

Peace.

Sincerely,
Your Teacher