EXCUSE ME... CAN I TALK TO YOU?!?!


well my 4th year of summer theater camp has just about come to a close; this is the point where i need therapy to stop the nervous twitch on my hand that continuously slaps my face every 5 minutes or so and i am unable to keep the drool from sliding down my chin. it's been fun, crazy and for 2 years running i have cleaned the SAME GIRL's pee off the floor after she peed her pants... and for the record- BOTH TIMES occurred RIGHT AFTER a potty break. yes i am bitter.

i've had my fair share of kids with developmental disorders, crazy parents, crushes on some of the sweetest boys known to man, been surprised at the level of creativity and verbal skills some of these kids have and laughed out loud more times than i can count.

we've made masks and puppets and backdrops and stories. we've danced to cool songs, created characters and fractured fairy tales and nursery rhyme tableaus. we've learned new songs and made new friends and ate snacks and watched cartoons and played games and went on a nature walk. we did kabuki theater and pantomime and melodrama. we made a "camp fire" and did a barnyard dance and played twizzle. we turned ourselves into monsters and dinosaurs and cars and fairies and ducks and old people and dragons and aliens.

i've employed my tried and true method of staying sane when i am about to lose my cool- SING EVERYTHING... just sing... sing a song... sing when it's time to clean up... sing when you are trying to find out for the 1800th time whose shoes are sitting in the middle of the floor... sing when it's time for potty breaks and trips to the drinking fountain.... SING!!!

i've learned a lot more about myself this month than i could do in 10 years. i've learned a lot more about what my limitations are and how to stay calm when everything else about how i'm feeling would rather rage. i've learned that it's really really true that i am the type of person that NEEDS to get more than 6 hours of sleep at night or... you better watch out. i've learned that i don't have all the answers, am not always creative and will never stop asking other people what they think.

here's to another successful year of children's theater!

a quasi-poem titled:
work-schmerk- it's just children's theater!

this work is rewarding

this work is exhausting
this work makes me feel good
this work makes me frustrated
this work is fun
this work isn't fun
this work pays wicked well
this work only pays wicked well for 1 month
this work helps me know i am good at something
this works lets me know i have so much farther to go
the end.


[the title of this post is a direct quote from one boy i had in my class, who, during every possible inappropriate moment would shoot his hand in the air and say "excuse me, but can i talk to you?"... and i never thought i would say this: but i miss that already]

SO SHE MADE ME CRY...



this is a picture of my sister whitney. some of you may be surprised to see that she is standing-- as she is now paraplegic. this picture was taken at the age of two, probably just a few months before a fateful surgery would claim her ability to walk.

well whit is now blogging on a site for disabled folk and she most recently posted this blog about her baby boy... and thanks a lot whit... you made me cry like a baby! but truly, it's a very beautiful post and i wanted to share it with all of you.

MUSINGS ABOUT MOTHERS:

My little boy started truly walking about a month ago. It surprised me at how reflective that made me, just as much as it did when my daughter started walking. Watching his toddling, precarious gait propel him across a room fills me with a huge sense of pride in his accomplishment, but also because I made that! I helped him do that. Its sounds stupid but its almost like the feeling when you make a slam dunk when you and maybe other people didn't think you could. I may be in a wheelchair but I helped my son walk and I'm damn proud of it! And its almost something I want to say to other people when they give me that smile that people give babies when they are doing something cute. "See - I taught him that!"

It also makes me think of a picture I have of me. A little strawberry blonde cherub standing there in a pink dress giving a scrunchy smile to the camera. Standing there. My mother got to help me take my first steps as well. But then it was taken away from her. I constantly marvel at my mother's fortitude throughout the years. Our family has been through so much physically, mentally and spiritually through the years that if I wrote a family biography, everyone would accuse me of making it up. And through it all she seems to take most everything in stride. But she told me a story once. Right before they admitted me to the hospital for the surgery that ultimately paralyzed me, she had been scolding me. They had just finished waxing the hallway and I was running up and down like two year olds would. When I came out the anesthesia, and my legs weren't working, she told me that her guilt almost overwhelmed her. She had been yelling at me for using the legs that would never work right again. What a thing to think about at a time like that. But as a mother now myself, I understand what she felt. I get the seemingly irrational, emotional response to her crisis. Those precious little legs that she helped take those first few steps would never walk again and there was nothing she could have done about it. Her need to take responsibility needed to go somewhere, how ever illogical it went. But she got a greater gift then I will ever hope to get. She helped me become mobile twice. Her gentle encouragement through tears helped me learn to sit up again, to crawl around on my bum and knees, to use arms that would be for so many years my legs, and finally to be as independent a person as I could ever be.

So I guess what it really comes down to is this. I am passing my mother's legacy on to my kids. I am helping them to walk when I can't because my mom taught me first.

IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING...


7 layer bean dip makes me more happy than christmas

oh and

if you eat a peanut butter m n m and a gummie worm at the same time, it tastes EXACTLY like a flinstone's vitamin... no joke.