Sunday, September 18, 2011

Dreams and Nightmares

Sheila is lying on my feet as I write this.

Sheila never sleeps on my feet.

Lizzie is spending her time pacing back and forth, making a bed in the cage, on Walt's chair, or on the patio.

Polly is spending most of her time in my recliner, as usual, but gets very nervous when I suggest that she and I go outside. She stands far away from me and won't come when I call because she knows I'm up to something, but she can't figure out what. I have not seen her pee outside.

The dogs don't have a clue what is going on in the living room.

Walt is just working himself to the bone, having now painted the room and then making arrangements for the Pergo installation, only the Home Depot rep said we would have to shampoo the rug before they would take it up because of the dog urine embedded. I can't say as I blame them.

We talked about the shampoo, but it would take a day to dry and then we would have to lock the dogs out of the room to make sure they didn't pee in there again until the new floor was installed. Finally, Walt decided it would be easier for him to take up the rug himself, so he bought a rug cutter and has been cutting it into manageable swatches and carrying them out to the yard.

As it turned out, it was probably a good thing. The rug was much worse than we realized, with almost NO areas that were not soaked with dried urine. I have felt very guilty watching how hard Walt has worked cutting up the rug, but it's all out in the back yard now and the cement slab is ready to receive the Pergo when it is delivered.

But the dogs aren't sure what to do, since their beds no longer exist. Lizzie used to sleep on the rug behind the couch, and Sheila, on nights when I slept in the family room, slept at the other end of the couch, hidden under the end table. Neither of them slept on the big dog bed that is in that room.

Tonight will be the first night with no rug in the room and it will be interesting to see where everybody decides to sleep...and where Polly will pee.


We went to see a production of Midsummer Night's Dream by the fairly new Davis Shakespeare ensemble. It was basically a fun production but I have stated often that Shakespeare is not really my forte. I always feel lost through a good portion of whatever play I'm seeing, and it takes doing a lot of research afterwards to put together a review.

Others probably feel the same about Gilbert & Sulllivan, which I can review without batting an eyelash.

But I had particular trouble with last night's show. I've seen Dream several times so I kinda sorta know what's going on, but this production was kind of a salute to bicycles and in the opening scene Oberon, the king of the fairies is angry with Tatiana, the queen of the fairies about this figure made of bicycle parts which was supposed to represent someone that I couldn't figure out.

Well, when I checked my last reviews for Dream, and the script for the play, I still couldn't figure out what the heck this figure was supposed to be. I was tearing my hair out trying to put it in context and wondered ... was there an alternate version of the play I didn't know anything about?

I finally decided to admit my ignorance and sent an e-mail to my contact in the cast. Then I checked character descriptions and figured out that the figure was supposed to be a young Indian prince whom Oberon wants to train as a knight, but Tatiana refuses to relinquish her control.

OK. Now I felt stupid for having written the e-mail, but I sent a follow up saying "nevermind. I figured it out." But I hadn't really, because this scene opened the play last night and I even read the script and couldn't find it. But I went ahead and wrote the review without mentioning it at all and submitted it to the paper.

Well, then I got a reply to my note and learned that what was, in this production, Act 1, Scene 1, in the original is actually Act 2, Scene 1, but they needed to use it to set up the whole bicycle theme, since the figure is made of bicycle parts, so they reordered the scenes.

I'm not sure if I still feel stupid or relieved that maybe I had a good reason to be confused...except now I've aditted to the Shakespeare people that I'm not really all that intelligent when it comes to Shakespeare!

And now I have to rewrite my review.


BTW, thanks to reader Ginni, I found out that Kiva is trying to raise money for My Charity Water, an organization trying to bring clean water to areas which have no water. Check this page for information. 100% of anything you donate will go toward the water project.

1 comment:

phonelady said...

Oh i can only imagine what Walt has gone through with the carpet . We had to do that once when our carpet had to come up cause we wanted a bare floor with rugs . Then we decided we did not want the house and we sold it . Sometimes I miss it sometimes I dont . LOL !!!