all that's past is prologue...

I've bene lucky enough, in the last week, to have seen Caught by Full Circle Theater Company  and Birds of the Future by Skewed Visions — two similar yet very different shows that have turned things up-side down for me. In both, you enter the world of the piece by entering through a very visual set space; in Caught , a gallery, and in Birds , more like my dad's basement. Both then bring you abruptly into their worlds;  in Caught that is a world of evocative words as expressed by incredible performances, and in Birds , a world of very physical performance, punctuated by a few sections of very visceral language. Caught is a more linear piece, which makes the way it spins you on your head all the more surprising. In a Skewed Visions piece, you expect to be turned around, but you still at some point sit with your neck craned wondering "How did I get here?" Both are incredible shows (and with low ticket prices), and run for one more week. I can't recommend enou...

This morning, I attended Beatrix's LAST "Randy's Races" track and field day at Randolph Heights. It was, fittingly, just about as cold as it was for her first one in kindergarten, when Ms. Nelson broke away from her all day off-campus training to run down and whip her huge class of hellions into angelic shape, and when the entire kindergarten class ended the day by all doing the Michael Jackson "Killer" dance with Ms. Kritta. They were so tiny that many of them cried when they could not scoot their cart across the tennis court or fell out of their burlap sack as they hopped. Today, they were much bigger. They handled the games with aplomb, as well as a lot of joy. Beatrix was chosen as one of the older kids to help with some of the younger classes. And I almost cried because the lasts are coming fast and furious now. Immediately after, Patrick and I whipped down to a Character Recognition Luncheon by the Synergy and Leadership Exchange (the Global Exec...

Some days you end up doing yard work over your lunch break because it's the only time you can and it's about to rain for 7 days straight. So you are in a pencil skirt and (low sensible) heels cutting down stems and raking things and thinking that there has to be a better way. But there wasn't, really, because it was just this last weekend you got the all clear to cut down dead stems because it's been a late spring and pollinator bees were still hibernating in them. And over the weekend you worked all day Saturday and didn't want to tackle this particular yard work on mothers day, though you did do some other yard work. So the pollinators are safe and you are cutting the stems and you have mulch in your shoe and you are thinking about this is then first year you knew not to cut the stems, and even though it's a PITA to be doing yard work on a random Wednesday afternoon it still seems like a reasonable price to pay for a pollinator or two. And you feel bad you...