I Didn't Die

The Pirate points out, not-too-gently, that my previous choice of subject matter might combine with more than two weeks of bloggish silence and lead people to be unnecessarily concerned for my health.

I did have a cold or flu sort of thingie for a while, and I've got more than my share of aches and pains and etc, but I am not at death's door by any means.

What I am is exhausted, and going through some sort of wheezing pouting period. In other words, I didn't have time to write for the past few weeks... until Monday, and I decided to just waste Monday by lolling around the house, knitting and reading and refusing to wash my hair.

So there.

This comes from volunteering (why do I do that?) and also from having no reasonable sense of boundaries whatsoever when it comes to Fixing Things.

So I spent the last four weeks or so in a rapidly escalating sense of Panic and Impending Doom, at least some of which was probably entirely unnecessary. And *that* led me to devote more and more of my time to Crisis Management, and no time at all to important things like... well, like knitting, or blogging, or getting some sort of handle on financial matters, or getting chores done.

What was I doing? Other than fretting, which I obviously excel at?

I was making plants.

Okay - I was painting and sewing and gluing and sewing and cutting and stuffing and sewing and pinning and sewing and running errands and sewing and hauling wood and sewing and painting some more and sewing some more. Did I mention sewing? My fingers are actually so calloused that I can't feel the wool under my fingers anymore when I knit, I've been sewing through tough materials (and pricking my fingers with darning needles) so much.

Part of this frenzy of activity was the making of set pieces and painting of sets, and part of this was costume making, but most of it was making plants.

Great big giant plants. The sort that are big enough to swallow people. Several people, in point of fact.

Because the Vampire was in a production of "Little Shop of Horrors". And he was the voice for the plant (in point of fact, there were four versions, each larger than the last). The show was big, complicated, and demanding. Not more than they could normally handle, and the kids were working hard - but the show was showing signs of being buried under an avalanche of health and other disasters (see post below). So even in the second (and final) week of the production run, we were still working on the plants. We might finish them next year.

But the kids were great.

I'll let Chris tell you more about how they did, and specifically about how the Vampire did... because you'll be less likely to dismiss her as being blinded by Stage Mommyness.

I won't tell you whether I bribed her or not.