Upstate Theatricality

Hey, folks - It's really late, but I haven't given you the latest for a good little while, so I'll just shoot you some highlights quick before I hit the hay:

I was home sick two days last week with a stomach thing, and now T appears to be coming down with it. More on that later. Had an ultrasound done, I did, and an x-ray on the abdomen, and there were no knitting needles or staplers lodged down there. Other than that, I don't think we determined much.

Ain't seen hide nor hair neither of buck nor doe up yonder on Ragged Mountain. And that, again, is more than enough of that.

Hobie is ever more palsied and rickety. He still enjoys life, but the decline is becoming precipitous. More and more eye goo, deafness now that is all but total, a tendency to wander over to you and lean heavily, asking for attention like an old drunk hitting up a barely-recognized former gradeschool classmate for a drink...He followed me downstairs this morning for some reason, and I had to go back down and carry him up. Can't do hardwood stairs - his feet don't get enough purchase, and the slipperiness is more information than his brain can process. Stiff in the hips, paler and paler, shedding more and more...He's still nice to have around, but I suspect it won't be long. (Now watch him show up in Q's high school graduation photos.)

T has taken to preparing breakfast in the morning for whichever parent she can. I was home sick on Thursday and so was the recipient of a tray with any number of plastic food items on it. She doesn't ask permission, doesn't ask what you want - she just walks in, carefully balancing her brimming tray, and announces it to you. It is the warmest and most delightful thing anyone has ever experienced, ever.

Q spends probably a total of at least an hour of each home day at the piano - APART FROM practice time with Mami. And he isn't just hammering out "Crazy Frog" as fast as he can (though he does do that) - he's going ahead in his books and checking out what next week's lesson will bring, he's refining his attention to subtleties in the pieces he's working on how, he's inventing minor-key versions of songs he learned to play weeks ago, alternating between those and the major versions he's learned...It's fascinating to listen to. I'm scared to mess it up so I don't say much, but Janneke and I will just look at each other and smile when he heads that way. Best pile of money we ever spent.

Though the Dyson Ball vacuum cleaner is at the top of the list too. It is just brilliant. Spending the big bucks on a vacuum cleaner is so worth it. (Though the Rainbow was just waaay too much.)

Spent the afternoon today on a field trip to Schenectady, NY, where we watched a community theater production of a locally written and produced play called "The Land of the Night Before". I'm sure the theater group has a website somewhere - it was at the Proctor's complex, which has a giant theater (that was holding a performance of The Nutcracker today at the same time as our play, and which attracted a whole separate class of people, from what we could see - we had kind of had enough of that show last year, and so vowed to do a different sort of Christmas outing this year) and a smaller theater space a couple of doors down. They seem to dominate much of the old downtown in Schenectady. (I just revel in the fact that I can spell that. "Schenectady". Though I'm still not too clear on "Poughkeepsie".)

It was very "Waiting for Guffman" - original songs, local folks with well-hidden dreams of making it big, a cast of fifty-year-olds and seventh graders, hand-painted scenery, a spotlight that you could hear every time it fired up - I think they were actually shoveling coal into it. Not a big-budget production.

But over a hundred people, probably, clapping and laughing, and probably forty involved in the production. There was a lot to make fun of - and Janneke and I were sneaking sidelong glances at each other all afternoon. The plot was that there's this place where they're perpetually locked in "The Night Before..." - and nobody there knows what comes the next day, because the next day never comes. And some magical travelers come through and are perplexed by the situation - gifts that never ever get opened, trees that are circularly decorated and undecorated all day long - and you're sure, of course, that these travelers will show the people that the true joy of "The Holiday" ("Christmas" is never mentioned, which reeeeeally grated on us after not very long at all) is in its oh-so-ephemeral, and therefore, glorious, completion.

But no, in the end the travelers decide that the townspeople are better off being perpetually blue-balled by Christmas (sorry - "The Holiday That Shall Not Be Named"), and they all sing happily about how great it is never to achieve fulfillment. Which is just very, very weird. (Janneke was the first to connect "The Holiday" and "It" as something that good kids can play around with, and maybe even come close to, but can never actually do.)

But I can't bring myself to make too much fun of it, because we had this overwhelming impression throughout, for so many reasons, that the world is a far, far better place for having seen this production. The writers, the producers, the directors, the musicians, the actors, the stage hands, the volunteer ushers - Everyone was so tickled to be living their lives in this very full way, producing something that is new and is theirs, and which never would have been had they not come together as a community and done it. It was very appropriate to be in upstate New York and feel such a Bedford Falls-type event coming into being. I could almost see Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver sneaking into the chorus on a couple of numbers.

We had a lot of other things in common with "It's A Wonderful Life" too. T had taken her dramamine before the trip, and when the play started, and when its quality became pretty apparent, T started to complain about being sick. We assumed this was her being dramatic about her medicine, which she does a lot, as an excuse to not have to stay in the theater and be bored. So we told her we weren't going to leave, that she could lie down in our laps if she wanted but she wasn't getting out. "Am I gonna throw up?", she'd ask, with that strange belief that we would know, and that strange belief that whatever vaguely travel-related activity she partakes in might somehow result in vomit. Last time I'd heard it was when we got pulled over for a burnt-out tail light on the way to a movie. "No, T," we said, "you are not going to throw up. You're not sick, you just want to move, but you can't right now. Settle down and watch the play, please."

Then she threw up. So both T and Zuzu had holiday heaves. I caught some in my hands, Janneke some more in hers, and I carried her (T, not Janneke) to the bathroom and cleaned us both up. (I just now wonder how Janneke managed to clean herself off - she stayed behind with Q, who, by now, has seen T vomit so many times that he hardly even blinks. Just lifts his hands to protect his eyes and keeps watching. But, hey, I shouldn't worry about how or if she managed to clean up. This is Janneke. She probably has a firehose and an autoclave in her purse - I'm sure she did just fine.) Then T and I went down to the lobby and hung out on a big comfy couch, waiting for intermission and talking about penguins. She felt a lot better, and was able to go in and see the second half of the show, where the giant snowman was finally vanquished and Yule, the magical stranger, overcame his self-doubt and realized with triumphant zeal that he should give up on this whole idea of helping people to actually experience their lives and pretty much just leave well enough alone. Huzzah!

Home to Chinese food, piano lessons, bedtime stories and bedtime. Which I am soon to experience.