Why the blog can't ride shotgun for a few weeks.

I'm writing this to tell you we might not be seeing that much of each other for the next couple of weeks.

I know. 

Take a moment if you need to.

You okay?

Here's the situation.

For those of you who read this blog regularly, you know the Things are very involved in a community theatre. For those of you who don't read this blog regularly, the Things are very involved in a community theatre. And as a direct result, I am also very involved in said community theatre.  

I know it seems like yesterday they were both performing in Annie and I was threatening to join them onstage, but it's already about time for the curtain to go up on another show.  

In a little over two weeks, The Secret Garden opens, and I am bursting with pride that not only are both girls once again part of the amazingly talented cast, but that my little Thing 2 has the role of Mary Lennox in the cast comprised exclusively of high school students, and is knocking it out of the park (at least from what I can tell by the constant rehearsing going on in my family room. That, and I'm totally biased).

Let me just tell you...opening night?

I. Will. Be. A. Mess.

But the state of my explosive pride and unleashed emotion at opening night every performance is neither here nor there and certainly not the point of this post.

The point is, I've once again found myself in charge of sets.  And by 'in charge' I mean leading a team that started out with about five members but that has somehow dwindled down to a meager three. Which includes me. And Husband.

The past two days Husband and I have made two stone walls. 

Phase 1 - The garden walls.
I will be finding styrofoam pellets in unusual places for weeks.
I'll post pics of the finished product when it's finished.
If I'm still alive.

For the next two weeks I will be hard at work at the theatre continuing to spray paint the stones on the walls (and continuing to get high off the fumes - an unexpected but fun perk), attach vines and flowers to the walls, paint various pillars and pots, attach cement angels and cherubs to platforms, arrange pots and pots of fake flowers and try to figure out how in the hell to get a three tiered cement fountain unfrozen from the ground in negative ten degree weather...and then how to make it work.

And then I'll be moving it all into the beautiful and historic* theatre in downtown Minneapolis and shuttling my kids the 30 minutes there every afternoon for five days, and staying to help with sets and hair and videotape and wait and watch until they're done at 10 or so.

*historic because the theatre is over 100 years old and has been everything from a silent-movie house to a vaudeville theatre to a venue for amateur variety shows. In the 1940's it was actually an adults-only movie house. They say all theaters have ghosts.  If that's the case, let's hope this one is wearing pants.

Oh, and I'm also in charge of purchasing and organizing concessions (which I may or may not have volunteered to be in charge of when I found out we can serve beer and WINE at the shows) and coordinating and organizing all of the parent volunteers.

So the point of this post and the meaning behind the title?

BRING ME WINE.

STAT.

That, and that until February 11th I'll be busy. Maybe too busy to write as much as I'd like or to read and comment on the blogs I follow, but I'll still be around (I like you all too much to go completely off the grid).  I might pull the trick of reposting some oldies.  I'm sure there's a few (or 50) that my new friends haven't read.  And I might not have time to write a bunch of full posts, but I'll certainly still be around on facebook and twitter.  

I may be crazy busy, but I'm not crazy (shut up, Husband).

Now I'm going to go take a bath, have some wine and watch The Bachelor.

I'm never too busy for that.

You're not too busy to click on this flashing banner, are you??