We finally were able to go to the Paperhand Puppet Intervention show, City of Frogs, a week ago. We went opening night, when daughter was here, but the show got rained out. We had a few other nights open - all rainy.
I was glad to finally get a chance to see it. It's one of my favorite shows of theirs. If you live in the Triangle and haven't had a chance to see it, it will still be at the Forest Theater in Chapel Hill the next weekend (Sept. 7/8/9) and at the outdoor theater at the NC Museum of Art the following weekend (Sept 14/15/16). You can check the Paperhand calendar here.
I'll post one photo above the fold - it's from the first minute so I'm not giving much away. I'll put the rest below the fold so that anyone who's going in the next few weeks can avoid them.
The story of a puppet...
[DON"T go further if you're going to go see it!!!!!]
I haven't checked in here for a while. The performances of the musical went very well, and we had a wonderful time. Then we spent some great time with my sister, my niece, and my mother for the next week. Daughter comes home today, and she'll be here for a week and a half! It's the longest visit since she was home for winter break.
These are some of the best, but busiest, weeks of the year!
I'll get back to blogging later in August. Have a good few weeks!
[BTW, for those who are in central NC, Paperhand Puppet Intervention's new show, City of Frogs, starts in Chapel Hill, on Friday.]
[I have a work project that I'm trying to finish by Friday so I don't have to work over Labor Day weekend - when dear husband will actually be home! Work, unfortunately, has been aided by the fact that younger son has a cold and feels bad so he's been watching lots of TV ("I am the terror that flaps in the night, I am the fingernail that scrapes the blackboard of your soul." "I will name him George, and I will hug him and pet him and squeeze him.." "You should write a book: "How to Offend Women in Five Syllables or Less" "Vulcans are a species that appreciate good ears").]
They used My Discarded Men by Eartha Kitt for one of the dances on So You Think You Can Dance a few weeks ago. I enjoyed the dance - what I noticed of it. There are so many nuances to her singing I kept getting distracted by it. I'd pay attention to what she was doing with the notes and inflections, and I just didn't pay as much attention to the input from my eyes.
Here's the dance: the top seven women dancers group number on July 6:
[I'm having a wonderful time with the community theater rehearsals for Once Upon a Mattress. Today, we moved into the high school theater; I helped with the costumes; we disco-ed; and we ran through a few of the scenes onstage. We have rehearsals every evening this week except for Friday. If I don't post, I'm happy, but tired!]
I had another busy day today - singing with the choir at two services (regular and memorial), talking with neighborly friends, gardening, etc. I took pictures but didn't get a bloom day post together. I wasn't planning on blogging.
I had to, however, after reading a friend's poem at her blog, The Reticulated Writer. I lovethe way the poem goes through thoughtful parts and slightly sarcastic parts and twists back on itself. I love the images. I love the way it's put together. I love the conclusions she tells herself at the end. I love the blog labels she has for the post.
You know, I hate to even say that much because I don't want to color your impression of the poem so I decided to white out my comment. You can come back and highlight it to read after you read her poem.
We're in high spring right now, and the weather has been beautiful. Blogging is taking a bit of a back seat. :)
Last Friday and Saturday, we were in Asheville for daughter's dance concert. She was in four dances - three of them in a row - and she led the middle one of those three. She was in Foxtrot, African jazz, and Ballet dances. She choreographed and led a theater dance to James Darren's version of Come Fly With Me. She decided to make it an audience participation dance. If you're a Facebook friend of mine, I "shared" a video of that (and the ballet performance) that someone posted.
The audience responded wonderfully - lots of dancing all up and down the aisles and both in front of and behind the block of seats. There were probably about 50 people dancing onstage - mostly dancers, but about five (by younger son's count) regular audience members.
Four of that five weren't related to daughter. :)
I had such a blast dancing and enjoying her dancing and leading. She seemed so calm and poised!
Then I sat back down in my seat for the ballet dance, and tears started streaming down my face.
[No photos because it's too late to call and ask her if she minds my posting them.]
The next morning, we all wandered around downtown Asheville. We had seen these stars in a window last summer when we brought her to college. We decided to buy one last weekend. We have no idea where we're going to hang it!
I didn't take that many photos because... well... I wasn't focusing on that!
Shady Grove Flowers on Lexington Ave is a lovely, eclectic store. Here's their small garden tucked in back. We came away with two more vases to hang on the walls. We can't put vases out on tables downstairs because Tamlin, our boy kitty, loves to eat flowers. He doesn't eat daffodils, however, so this is the only time of year that we can have flowers at the table.
Lina, however, likes to drink the water from the vases. She doesn't knock them over...
...too much.
I also love the Grove Arcade, which was built in the 1920's and is architecturally fascinating:
Daughter's here, and my sister and her family are visiting my mother. We have a fun and full week which means brief blog posts with random ideas:
We went to see Tangled today and really enjoyed it. I want a ... oops, don't want to give away anything. You know what I want if you've seen the movie - it's small and multi-colored.
While talking about college, older son mentioned that there are large chalkboards in the bathrooms at the School of Design. They're encouraging graffiti - creative graffiti, of course.
I'm actually almost ready for the Christmas season - mainly because I've avoided most Christmas stuff so far this November. Except for grocery stores, I haven't been in any stores that are decorated for Christmas yet. Come to think of it, I've been too busy gardening & homeschooling (& being sick) to do much shopping of any kind the last few weeks.
My throat finally doesn't hurt anymore. My voice isn't back yet.
It's 11:15 pm on a Friday evening, and younger son is happily doing his homework (with a cat on his lap) in the living room. He currently has two books that I've assigned as homework. The first is The Way Things Work, which he's read parts of, but he hasn't ever read through the whole thing. He's very mechanically minded so this is a wonderful book for him (have you ever thought about how many levers there are in the human body?). The second is the Usborne Book of World History - reading the parts we haven't already covered. Tonight, he's reading the first one - his idea. I was doing dishes at about 10:30, and he gave me a big grin and said, "Look! I'm doing my homework!"
I've been able to do more homeschooling this week than last, when I had a fever, but I haven't felt mostly normal until today. It's nice to get through the day without having to take two naps! This morning, he had a homeschooling class about flight (Do you know how often the Bernoulli principle has come up recently? Lots!). After we got back from a picnic/wander at Duke Gardens, he spent a large part of the afternoon making paper airplanes from the instructions at Paper Airplane Designs, a website which his flight teacher sent out.
It was our second time at Duke Gardens this week - this time without photography. We talked a lot about the gardens and also about the history of flight. On Wednesday, the two of us had spent the afternoon there taking pictures for our Duke Gardens blog and our Durham blog. He's really gotten interested in photography lately, and he took more pictures than I did! His favorite things to photograph are animals and birds. He's very patient and likes to see how slowly he can sneak up on them so they don't run/fly away. Sunday, he, dear husband, and I went to Duke's East Campus (below) to take photos and sketch for the Durham blog. The weather has been beautiful this week, and the fall colors are at peak so we're trying to get out and enjoy them as much as possible.
Duke East Campus walking trail panorama photo by younger son - the right and left walls are actually perpendicular to each other.
I love how easy it is to look things up on the internet while we're homeschooling. Instead of having to look through CDs for music, we just go to YouTube to listen to a fugue,
hear some four part harmony (older son sang the bass part ("I don't sing, young man!" in this quartet a few summers ago in the community theater's perfomance of The Music Man):
listen to Vivaldi's Spring,
look at a mosaic, and get a good look at HagiaSophia (which we also discussed at dinner tonight with dear husband bringing more in from his Art History classes and older son doing the same from his Design class).
Although I enjoy all the things we do, I love weeks that are calmer and can be very focused on homeschooling. After Thanksgiving, things get busy as I try to homeschool somewhat normally while running around shopping like crazy and then give up somewhere halfway through December.
I want to be more organized about it this year. Last year, I ended up with the most "running around like mad" part after older son was done with exams. :P This year, I want to be done shopping by the time daughter gets back from college (Dec 14 - I'll have two weeks). I don't want to be all stressed out when everyone is finally home!!
