Is It Sunday Yet?

Weeks like this confuse me.  Shows should not start on Tuesday, but all the Music Circus shows start on Tuesday. Not really sure why.  It's especially confusing in a week like this when I have five shows to review in 7 days.  When I got up this morning I was sure it must be Saturday, at least.  But it's only Wednesday.

We saw two shows over the weekend.  One was The Totalitarians, about which I wrote yesterday.  Then for our anniversary the next day we saw a show called Clever Little Lies, a comedy about marital infidelity -- surely a wonderful theme for an anniversary.  It was a hilarious comedy, until suddenly it wasn't.  I haven't written the review yet.  I'm trying to figure out how to explain how funny it is, without giving away the fact that it doesn't end as funny as it begins.

Then last night Dolly was back where she belonged, as Hello Dolly opened on the Music Circus stage.  It was about the hottest day of the week, so walking to the theater from our parking slot was like doing exercise in a sauna, but thank God the theater is air conditioned.  When I first started reviewing, Music Circus shows took place in a giant tent.  I think they had blowers blowing air in at intermission, but the heat combined with the terribly uncomfortable "directors chairs" made attending a show less than pleasant.

Fortunately two or three years after I started reviewing, they built their permanent building, with comfortable seats and air conditioning.  Once you get into the place, all is fine and the shows are almost always high quality and lots of fun.

But when you wake up the next morning it's Wednesday and your week doesn't end until Sunday...and there are two more shows to review between now and then.  This week it's Cyrano de Bergerac on Thursday and Bells are Ringing on Friday.  Both are part of the Davis Shakespeare Ensemble's now-annual summer festival, where they do two non-Shakespeare shows and run them for about six weeks each.

Next week was scheduled to be a non-reviewing week because our plan was to go to Santa Barbara on Saturday for Tom's annual birthday BBQ on the beach, but we have had to cancel.  I was uncomfortable about leaving my mother, but was going to do it but then the termites invaded and the appointments Walt was able to get with the exterminator and the contractor (to fix the garage door, which is now off its hinges and nailed to the garage itself) were going to make it impossible to do what we planned to do.

So we won't be at the BBQ and we won't see Brianna's All Star game, but hope to go down a couple of weeks later, when the dust settles up here.  The last time I saw the girls was Christmas and I'm itching to see them again! Thank goodness I started writing to them so I feel at least still a part of their lives especially when Brianna answers me!

I console myself with the realization that with Uncle Ned, Uncle Norm, and Uncle Joe around, the girls couldn't care less if I were there at all, but if we go by ourselves, they are more likely to be interested in their old grandparents.

So not going also puts less pressure on me to clean out the living room before Ashley and Dave move in here to dog sit.  What with Swap Bot projects deadlines and reviews to write the relocation into my office is going slowly.  It's kind of like the process that I use when writing a review. I write a bit, then go do something else--often just sitting and staring into space while my mind races.  With the office reorganization, I put a few things away, then sit and try to figure out what I am going to do next. I could easily just move it all in and sort through it after it's out of the living room, but if Ned has gone to all this trouble to give me this organized office, I want to return everything thoughtfully and not just throw something on a shelf, but decide why it goes on that shelf.

There are tons of books, but I want to put them back into some sort of order.  I have a place for all the books about animals (dogs, horses, elephants) and I just started a shelf for mysteries, but since the mysteries are all over the place in boxes, it require going through all the boxes to separate them out.

I have a Steinberg section, a section for theater books, and a section for books about language (I am fascinated with facts about language, the history of language, and odd facts about language, like Martha Barnette's books, "Ladyfingers and Nun's Tummies" (a lighthearted look at how foods got their names) and "Dog Days and Dandelions" (a lively guide to the animal meanings behind everyday words).  I also have a section planned for books about San Francisco and then there are all those books that don't fit in a specific category.

Theoretically, with the books I have donated to Logos, you'd think that the remaining books would all fit on the shelves, but there are two problems with that.  First, before the reorganization, I had books stacked two-deep on the shelf, which meant that there were many books I hadn't seen in years and didn't realize I had.  I don't want to do that now, which means that I start out with half the shelf space I had for the same number of books. Also, I had lots of binders in cabinets and other storage areas, binders for the Compassion kids, binders for collections of newsletters I have written over the years, binders for diaries of journal entries of trips we have taken before I started Funny the World.  I have only ONE shelf that is tall enough for a binder, so those have to go there.  I have a wonderful number of shelves but two are much too high for me to reach, so those will be for storage and I have to figure out what, other than movies and slides from the 1960s and 70s are best to go up there.

So it just all takes thought and thinking sometimes leads to frantic depression about how I'm ever going to get this done.  But I will.  And when it is finished it will be great. I just have to survive the growing pains...or is it shrinking pains?