The Show MUST Go On!

*****

It all began with a rainy Monday and The Kiddo’s bright idea to put on a play.

It went from there into full-fledged crazy.

First, I was up against some serious obstacles. My star is only three years old. She doesn’t read yet, which makes it tough to run lines. My other problem? The little diva wanted a role for her stuffed Stegosaurus, Dino.

I love a writing challenge. It wasn’t long before I had the problems solved. Insert myself as narrator, who could spoonfeed The Kiddo her lines. And as for Dino—I had her voice down pat. Creative juices were flowing. This was going to be fun.

I curled up in my favorite chair with my pen and a notebook. Fifteen minutes later: I had a working draft of “The Princess and the Dinosaur.”

Now here’s the thing about me: when things go well, I don’t know when to put on the brakes. Next thing I know, I’m on the phone, inviting Wonny and Papa (grandparents) to our fabulous play on Friday.

And of course my mom informed me she wanted refreshments. Shit.

Monday afternoon, we jumped into rehearsals with gusto. I read my lines with all the flourish I could muster. The Kiddo’s face collapsed and she bawled red-faced through both rehearsals. I thought, Crap! This is SO not good!

During her nap, I designed and printed programs and tickets, praying it would all work out. Good news: the programs looked better than the ones from our local professional children’s theatre. The bad news: the star still hated the play. Damn.

Tuesday morning, The Kiddo told me she didn’t want to do the yucky play. She informed me she thought the Black Moment was too black. The writer in me couldn’t give up. When things aren’t working, it’s clearly time to revise.

Tuesday afternoon, she approved the revisions and declared the new Black Moment to be just kinda gray. We drove off to the Salvation Army store to find sheets to paint for our backdrop. We enjoyed a frutiful creative meeting over lunch at the Greek restaurant.

Wednesday, rehearsals continued and we painted the backdrops. We got green paint on the floors and walls. I thought it might be fun to do dinner theatre, so I called Wonny and Papa and asked if they wanted potato pancakes or fries with their take-out church fish fry. I took orders and had a few laughs with Mom over how the play was going.

Wonny told me she wanted snacks during the play, too.

“What???” I told her, staring into the phone. “This thing’s only three freaking minutes long! How many snacks you think you’ll have time to eat?”

Wonny wanted snacks. Ok, The Princess and the Dinosaur? I put dinosaur fruit snacks on my grocery list. Before bed, The Kiddo told me she wanted to add a dance number after the curtain call. To Brown Eyed Girl, by Van Morrison.

Sure, whatever.

Thursday, The Kiddo didn’t want to rehearse. She wanted to play with her fairy princess set. I told her Dino was unsure of her lines and needed another rehearsal.

We held a dress rehearsal, during which the cats wreaked havoc. Baxter played with the string I’d rigged to give Dino a more artful entrance. Simon tossed around the plastic baguette we used as a prop.

“BAXTER YOU GET OUT OF HERE!!!!” The Kiddo screamed.

“Just ignore them,” I told her. “They’ll probably be in the middle of things tomorrow anyway.”

Baxter gave me a dirty look. But we all knew it was true.

After lunch, I drove to Karl’s Market to buy The Kiddo’s favorite ranger cookies for after-play refreshments and macerated a pint of frozen raspberries from last year’s garden for sundaes.

Now, the big day looms before us. Props are tucked away where cats can’t get at them. The castle and forest backdrops are waiting to be hung from the entertainment center with masking tape. The costumes hang in the closet, ready. We know our lines and if we forget, who cares? I’m hoping for the best, but things have gotten kind of crazy. (okay, totally)

But no matter what, no matter if the backdrops fall and the damned cats tear everything to shreds, I have to say it’s been an awesome project. We overcame challenges. We had fun. We created. And we did it together and that’s all that really matters.

Way Out Water Towers!

*****

My daughter is obsessed with water towers. There’s a big one at the top of the hill on our regular walking route. Ever since The Miss discovered it, she’s been fascinated by every water tower we encounter. Plain ones. Fancy ones. Doesn’t matter. On our recent camping trip, she pointed out every water tower between home and Two Rivers, Wisconsin. And there are a lot more than you’d imagine. We’ve become so accustomed to looking for water towers that I find myself calling out, “Water tower!” when she isn’t even in the car. (I recently took a photo of the water tower in Arena because Julia wasn’t there to see it with me.) So it seemed natural to suggest we go to the library and check out some books on water towers. She jumped around the kitchen, yelling “Wat-oo tow-oos! Wat-oo tow-oos!” arms flapping like a baby condor. She was excited; I was excited for coming up with an idea that made her so unabashedly ecstatic. I could hardly drive there fast enough.

Then we hit a bump in the road. Who’d have thunk it, but water tower books are a rare breed.

I won’t bore you with everything I went through, from dealing with a really disappointed little kid to trying to find another source for a water tower book. Let’s just say my efforts were both exhaustive and exhausting. Finally, it occurred to me, after all hope seemed extinguished. Why not write one myself?

Now, let me clarify something before I go a single step further: I have no desire to write for children. Sorry. My work can’t stand up to an audience that sharp. But I can write for the most important kid in my life. I’d written a book for her earlier this year—Little Girl in the Woods, a board book about my sweetie’s passion for camping. So I figured slapping this puppy together this should be a snap, right?

Not necessarily. I’ve learned a few interesting things thus far and thought I’d share them here.

1) MAKING TECHNICAL STUFF EASY ENOUGH FOR KIDS IS A BITCH. Yep, kids are smart little stinkers, but sentence length and vocabulary are an issue. Plus, kids have a limited set of experiences you can refer to in analogies. How to explain hydrostatic pressure to a little kid? Hell, I don’t get it myself! The best thing I can liken it to that she (and I) might understand is the feeling you get when you have to pee. Classy, I know. But I’m at a loss here.

2) YOU CAN BE LAZY AND LARCENOUS WHEN YOU’RE WRITING FOR YOUR OWN KID. I’m talking about pesky little legal landmines like cross-checking information, listing source credits, and obtaining publishing rights to photos. As far as I’m concerned, an initial search on Wikipedia and a cross check with howstuffworks.com is verification enough for me. But I doubt a publisher would think so. And what about all those photos I helped myself to on various websites? Let’s face it, getting rights to all that stuff would be a bear. Not to mention prohibitively expensive.

3) THERE’S NO SLAPPING TOGETHER ANY KIND OF PROJECT FOR CHILDREN. I spent two hours on the introduction yesterday. Yep, two hours to write 93 words. And that’s after the three hours I spent researching and outlining the day before. Had I operated that slowly in college, I’d still be sitting in College Comp. The discouraging part is I still have many sections to write and I haven’t even begun to think about page design. The way this thing is going, I figure she’ll either have lost interest in the entire topic or graduated high school by the time I’m halfway though.

4) I MUST BE INSANE. I add this as the only logical conclusion, considering I’m moving forward on this in spite of the aforementioned points. And I won’t even get into the lack-of-time rant again. My only defense is I love my kid. I guess that’s reason enough.

So Way Out Water Towers moves forward, God help me. It won’t be at a store near you, so don’t look for it. And don’t look for anything else I write, either. I’ll be so busy inventing non-bodily function analogies for hydrostatic pressure that I doubt I’ll have time to work on anything else.

Confession of a Busy Mommy/Writer

*****

I have to confess, every Tuesday morning, sometime between the first cup of coffee and actually stepping into a productive day, I come to a horrible realization: I have to write a post for this blog.

I wish I could say I write the first draft of these things Tuesday night, just hours after the previous week’s entry was posted. That I polish it all week, then spit-shine it one last time. But I don’t. Usually, I get that oh shit feeling that comes with remembrance, shove my kid in front of the Disney Channel and glue my butt to the office chair. I crank out whatever comes into my brain during the last fifteen minutes of Bunny Town.

I do let my post age on the hard drive while I check to make Julia’s still conscious and hasn’t, say, fingerpainted the cats. But beyond the aging, all I really do is tinker a bit. My last thought after clicking the POST button is inevitably thank God THAT’S done for the week. It’s hard enough trying to juggle mommyhood, writing short fiction, editing two novels, researching markets and finding time to submit, and then following up on my submissions. Once I send a post to cyberspace, I don’t have time to give it another thought.

Any writing teacher worth his or her salt would caution against my slapdash method of posting. They'd remind me that this blog is a showcase and should contain my best work. And my training and instincts as a writer agree. But there’s something to be said for off-the-cuff posting. I like the immediacy, honesty and freshness of a work that hasn’t been edited to the nth degree. Maybe it’s like those confessions you get from drunk coworkers at the company picnic. Once the internal editor’s off, anything can creep out. And what you get is usually ripe and intriguing.

So this is where I ask myself: if I had more time, would I do it differently? My answer: probably not. The honesty is like a drug and I can’t get enough. Some people have nightmares about being caught naked in public. I’m more likely to dread being caught in a lie. So I write what comes out and hope you’ll forgive my mad-dash ramblings. I don’t have time to change anytime soon.