MY MUSICAL IS GETTING A READING!

The exciting news around here is that the musical that I have been working on for many years, "Perfect Mothers", is getting a reading with the






   

The reading will take place in July.  That's next month.

My collaborator and I, Tina deVaron (she's the wonderful songwriter), have been working hard on rewrites.  Here is what our outline looked like before our script meeting

and this is what it looked like ninety minutes later.

So, I've been a little busy.  If you'd like to hear a song from our demo tape, click on this link.  The song is called Gravity.  It's about what happens to your body as time takes its toll.  You might want to turn your sound up.

We need to raise about $7,000 for this reading and are working with the festival to do so.  If you would like to make a TAX DEDUCTIBLE donation, you can go to Donate Perfect Mothers and contribute.  We will be so grateful!

I will be blogging more next week about the progress of the show, other details, and perhaps post a new song.  Until then ... the show must go on!

BAXTER, THE REDECORATOR

Our dog Baxter is slowly redecorating our home.  When we first got him, he surreptitiously ate a stick of butter off the counter and then vomited it onto the living room rug.  We tried for a month but couldn't get the smell out.

The rug went to the curb.  Oh, well.  It was old and stained anyway.

We still don't have a new rug.  We've been working on other parts of the house.  I did buy a new lamp for the living room, though.  My older son helped me pick it out, and the whole family liked it.

Then one day, after his morning walk, Baxter went crazily dashing around the house.  I mean, more crazily than usual.  He will get especially riled up after a bath, and on this particular morning I had given him a semi-bath in the kitchen sink.

It's the best way to get his muddy paws cleaned quickly.  He doesn't love it.  But he will sometimes take the opportunity to lick a plate that's nearby.

Anyhoo - he dashed around like a maniac, crashed into an end table, and sent the new lamp crashing to the floor.

It broke.  It doesn't look that bad, but trust me it's ruined.  I didn't take a "before" picture of it, because I didn't know Baxter was going to break it.

Of course, if we had a rug on the floor, it probably wouldn't have shattered.

So now we have a slightly darker living room with an exposed hardwood floor.  Thanks, Baxter.

I promised you in a previous post that I would show you my pink laundry room.

That's a cabinet my husband is putting together.  I love Ikea!  I can't get a wider shot because the room is too small for me to back up any further. Here's one from outside the room.

The color is just what I wanted.  And I didn't even consult my decorator.

I LIVE WITH BOYS

Yes, I live with boys.  Two teenage boys.  (Also a husband and a male dog.)  Boys have special ways of doing things. 

For instance, they like to keep a basketball on a decorative arm chair in the living room, just in case they need it.  Or ...

They tend to leave their homework, laptop and MAD Magazine right in everyone's way when they suddenly realize they're starving and race off to the kitchen to eat, which is every 45 minutes.  

Do you know what these are?

If you answered "Size 10 athletic socks that were peeled off of some sweaty feet and tucked into the sofa under that person's rearend while they watched TV " - then, congratulations!  You are correct.

Here's what is next to that sofa.  Three remote controls, a cordless phone, a cell phone, two calculators and a couple of decks of Yu Gi Oh cards.  This is so that we can push as many buttons as possible when we relax on the sofa.  (If you know why the calculators are next to the Yu Gi Oh cards, I think you live with boys, too.)  I often find a banana peel on this table as well.

Please notice, underneath the gadgets, the DVD "Call The Midwife".  You see, a girl does live here.

So guess what?  I had my husband paint the laundry room bright pink.  I might as well feel girlie as I wash and match those stinky socks.  Pictures of the laundry room next time!

SIGNS OF SPRING

We've been waiting so long for spring here in New Jersey.  My favorite flowers are tulips, and I always plant a row of bulbs in my front yard.  Squirrels often dig them up and replant them elsewhere.  I guess they think they're going to eat them later but then forget about them.  So then random tulips will just pop up around my yard.

Like this one, pushing up boldly from underneath a hydrangea plant.  Instead of waiting for the squirrels to come along and behead this flower, which they do, I decided to cut it and bring it inside in a bud vase.

That's pronounced VAAAAZH.

Spring also brings spring cleaning, or at least its supposed to.  I was trying to clear out the living room the other day, and this was on my side table.

That is a squashed up roll, or rather, half a roll of toilet paper.  It came from one of my son's A-frames when he unpacked from the last campout.  You know I'm raising my boys right when they unpack their unused toilet paper and camping gear and leave it on a table in the living room.

Help.

Also, please notice the book:  "Tiffany's Table Manners", which is right next to the toilet paper.  I believe this is called irony.

The book is a great guide to manners with easy to understand cartoon drawings that I bought one day in a fit of desperation after watching my boys hunch over their plate, shake their hair over the food, serve themselves two biscuits at a time with one hand and show their chewed-up food when they laughed out loud.  Want to have dinner at my house?

Also, notice the book: "Keep Calm And Carry On."  I think it's obvious why I bought that book.  I really need to read it more often.

The toilet paper had clearly been at the bottom of their A-frames for quite some time.  I threw it away.

Getting back to spring ... I still have a lot more cleaning to do.  A LOT MORE.  But in the meantime, there's this ...

 Hooray!

BAXTER GOT A BAD HAIRCUT

Baxter needed a grooming.  He was so shaggy all over and we couldn't even get a comb through him.  One day I was petting him and felt something sharp.  Upon further investigation, it was a pricker ball.  A little teeny one.  How long had it been stuck in his fur?  Dunno.

I took him to the groomer, and asked them to cut him short, but not too short, and to leave his head alone, because we were trying to grow out the top to give him more of a poodle head.  They did just as I asked.

Now he looks like he has an enormous head.

And his body looks so small and skinny.  Check out the side view.

My husband says he looks like an Albino Wookie.  I say he looks like Kazoo, the outerspace alien from the old Flinstones show.



The kids said he looked like ET. 

In any case, his head is big for his body now.  He used to have more of a flat top,
like this.

Which we liked, but it reminded us too much of our old doggy, Oliver, which made us a little sad, so we wanted him to look a little poofier on top.  Plus, we live in Jersey.  We like big hair.

We tried to mush the hair down by putting him under the covers.

That kind of worked. 

When my hair isn't right, I get really crabby.  But Baxter doesn't worry about it. 

I love dogs.

FOOT WASHING ON HOLY THURSDAY

So, I walked my dog Baxter first thing on Thursday morning as I always do.  When we came back in the house I realized that his paws were really muddy.  Not just wipe-with-a-paper-towel muddy -- they were rinse-in-a-bowl-of-water muddy.


So I got a bowl of water.

Baxter did not like the idea.  He was hard to pin down.  (See how gross that water is?)

But gradually he gave in.  And then I realized ... it is Holy Thursday and I'm washing feet!   Baxter is letting me be his servant!

I hummed the "Servant Song" as we washed.

"Will you let me be your servant?
Let me be as Christ to you?
Pray that I may have the grace to
Let you be my servant, too"

He did not enjoy my singing, but he did stay still.  I did all four paws.  He was clean enough to jump on the furniture ... which he promptly did.

Later, he hopped up into my lap and snuggled me.

I let him be my servant, too.

LADIES WHO LUNCH - NO MATTER HOW LONG IT TAKES

I took my friend Jeanann out to lunch for her birthday last week.  Her birthday was in October.   I meant to take her out in the actual month of her birthday, but then Superstorm Sandy hit, and then I got sick, and then it was the holidays, and then she got sick, and then my kids got sick, and then one of us needed a new furnace, or a new fence, or something like that.

Anyway, we had lunch.  We had salad and pizza and got all caught up.  She reminded me about this --

The high school was offering the Princeton Review Assessment Test, and I had forgotten to sign my son up for it.  Jeanann is always good at remembering stuff like that.  She reminded me and I made sure he took the test on Saturday morning at 9 a.m.  My son doesn't want me to go to lunch with her again any time soon.

Also last week, I had lunch with my friend Adrienne.  She was taking me out to lunch for my birthday which was in November.  Or maybe I was taking her out to lunch for her birthday which was in January.  We couldn't remember, but we enjoyed ourselves.  I had a Greek salad with meatballs in it.

It was so big I couldn't finish it and I got to take some home.Whoever got the idea to add meatballs to a salad is a genius.


Our lunches were totally decadent. No, we didn't have wine.  (I gave up drinking for Lent, which was pretty much the worst idea ever.)  We didn't even coffee or dessert.  But we talked for over 2 hours when we would usually be cleaning, or working, or at the store buying groceries or medicine or new sneakers for someone besides ourselves. 

I think lunch with a girlfriend is one of the best birthday presents ever.  How long do I have to wait to have another birthday lunch with another girlfriend?  Well, I have friends with birthdays in March and April.  So ...

If x represents the month of the birthday, and y is the number of kids that might get sick, and z is the number of salads on the menu ... how long until my next lunch?  As they say at the Princeton Review ...

Do your figuring here.