"A Capella"

Help!  I feel like I have lost my way in Blogland!  It has been weeks since I have posted something fairly regularly.  And I am finding it hard to pick it up again.  There has been a lot going on in my life since before Thanksgiving....Christmas, New Year's, my accident, Mikey's vacation, rehearsals, learning lines, the shows, my sister's visit.  It just seemed like I was always busy doing something else!  Well, its all over now, everything should be back to normal.  Still, I have procrastinated, lured by doing something mindless like computer games!  How ridiculous is that?

Okay, well, I guess the best way to get back to writing is to just start!  Here goes.....



Before I leave my most recent production behind, I want to devote one more post to the marvelous experience that this show provided.

I have had a rocky history in theater recently.  I've written about it a bit, but not in any great depth.  Nor do I intend to do so now.  The bottom line was that I missed being in a show.  All my upset had mainly to do with various personalities (and the people who go with them) that were a problem.  They would have said that I was the problem and for a while I might have believed them.

BUT....I don't think so anymore.

I had the great privilege of working with a truly great cast and crew.  I had only worked with one of them previously, the rest were all new to the theater group since I pulled back a couple of years ago.  Let me tell you about them.

Our Director is a very experienced actor/director with years and years of working in various community theaters all around the country.  She was easy to work with.  She was open to ideas.  She was willing to try different things.  She was supportive.  She was complimentary.  She was capable of giving direction without making a big fuss.  She didn't micro-direct, instead she relied on the actors' instincts when they fit her vision of the show.  She had a sense of humor.  She was knowledgeable and a real pleasure to work with.  There was no tug of war over who was in charge.  She was.  And she deserved to be.

Our Stage Manager was a true gentleman, who knew how to get a point across.  He was on top of things, always where he needed to be, helpful to a fault, supportive, and capable.  He kept us on track without dramatics.  Low-key and laid-back, yet nothing was left undone.  We stayed on schedule and he was responsive to our needs above and beyond what one might normally expect.  He was flexible where he needed to be and not above helping out an actor in a pinch.  He did a professional job, yet he was part of the gang!

Our light and sound guys were a bit removed from us....but that's just the nature of the game.  The sit up in the tech booth performance after performance hitting their cues every time!  Lights came on and went off right on schedule.  Sound effects were never early or late.  I caught no mistakes!  Just as it should be.  And the remarkable thing is they laughed everynight.  After nine performances and lots of rehearsals, they never lost interest is us or the show.  Real troupers!!

As for the actors??  Oh my, what a wonderful cast!  Each perfectly cast, each totally on top of their role, if mistakes were made, they were covered, each one of them very talented and able to bring their characters to life.  They delivered lines with great comedic timing.  They were completely believable in their roles.  And they made the play soar from one laugh line to the next....and there were a lot of laugh lines!  We started as strangers to one another (mostly) and ended as friends! 

We were blessed, too, by wonderful audiences.  Each performance was well attended (70-80 per show for all but one).  There were appreciative and best of all, they laughed when they were supposed to!!  Music to an actor's ears.  Our last audience was the best of them.  They laughed at everything!  They didn't miss once!  Actors respond to a lively audience, they want to do their best and it  turns into a mutual spark!

Of course, we were fortunate to be doing one of the funniest plays I have ever been involved in.  Anna Pie (an accent mark goes in there somewhere, but I can't get my computer to do it), the author, took a somewhat unusual situation and brought out all the humor inherent therein.  She also wrote the funniest line I have ever had in all my years of theater.  Taking it out of context and trying to explain it here would never do it justice and might give you a wrong impression of what kind of play it is.  But let me tell you, it was the longest, loudest laugh in the show....bar none!  

Sometimes in community theatre, there are weak links, someone who is not as talented or who isn't easy to work with, even sometimes one who just never gets it right at all.  But for this show every single person involved was good at what they do.  They were terrific actors/tech staff who made the show work night after night.  And what was the most remarkable of all....no one got mad at anybody else!  There was no angst, no squabbles, no one missing in action, no one who made demands, or was difficult to get along with.  Nobody ended up in tears.  Nobody ended up being an outcast or a diva! To put it simply, they were sane, cooperative, supportive, and good at what they do.  It was lovely to be a part of that cast.  I'd work with any or all of them again in a New York minute!  And unless, I completely misread them, I think they would work with me again too! 

They were theater people of the best kind.  They restored my faith that theater can be done without pain!  And even more, they restored the joy in theatre I have missed so much! 

So Jo, Geoff, Ron, Dale, Mallory, Bradley, Misty, Rina, Tamara, Allen, and Gary, thank you, all!  You are my kind of people!!  And I miss you already!

"We Are Family"

After spending most of the evening learning how to use our scanner correctly, I finally figured it out!!  And I am proud to share with you some of our family photos.  There isn't anything special about these photos or these people, except that "We Are Family".  I love them and I miss all who are gone.  But now, thanks to my lovely Little Sis,  I have lots of photos of  treasured faces and the wonderful memories they bring.  Here are just a few shots of random people at random times and random places.  I am happy to share them with you. 

(*They will enlarge if you click.)

My mom (mid-blink) and I in Phoenix in the late 1990s.

Little Sis and I around 1961.
She's a lot bigger now, but she's still just as cute!

My mom and dad, 1957

My dad always smiled for photos,
except this one!!  1957
(I wasn't much help either!)

Dad, Mom and I, 1953

My cousin Sherry and my Gram, 1952
(I'm not exactly sure who was teaching who!)

Me and my Gramps, 1950
(He never smiled in photos....except this one!) 

"Goomby" and Me, age 2, 1948

 

My Gram, two of my aunts, and me.
1947

One of my aunts' wedding, 1945
(from L to R:  my great-grandmother,
my grandfather -- see? No smile --
the happy couple, and my grandmother -- who always smiled!)

This lovely pin-up is my Mom, 1945
(There is writing on the back indicating that she sent the photo
to my dad overseas....and he brought it home all safe and sound!)

My mom, Lorraine C. Lisk, 1930
First Holy Communion

My grandfather, Norbert M. Lisk, Sr., 1921
(I think this is the oldest photo in the bunch.)

Yes, we are family and I love "seeing" them all again!!  I miss them every day!

"The Way We Were"

For reasons that I never really understood, my dad was absolutely opposed to owning a house or property of any kind.  He didn't mean for everyone, just for himself or his immediate family.  They always rented a house or an apartment.  The biggest thing they ever owned was a car (when they had one).  Both he and my mom worked hard to make our lives comfortable and to meet our needs.   We were a solid, hard-working, on the low-end-of-middle-class family.  We were never truly poor. We never were in need.  They never needed assistance from anyone.  Our family was always self-supporting and we never suffered from "want" of anything important.

Neither did we ever accumulate great wealth or expensive possessions.  No antiques, no valuable family heirlooms, no jewels, no artwork by Old Masters (or even New Wannabees!).  There was nothing of monetary value to be handed down to the next generation. 

The heritage our parents handed down to Little Sis and I was much more important.  We received love, morals, intelligence, values, judgement, humor, and tolerance.  And memories, wonderful, loving memories (mostly...for times were not always terrific....but the good surpasses the not-so-good by a country mile!)  But when it came to "things" there wasn't much.

There was one significant exception.  It was a treasure beyond price.

In the back of my parent's closet, there was a medium-sized canvas suitcase (for lack of a better word).  If I was very good and caught Mom at just the right moment, she would allow me to bring it out and examine the contents once or twice a year.  It was one of my very favorite things to do when I was a child.  I found those contents fascinating and never grew tired of looking at them.

Fast forward now to Little Sis's visit here last week. When I picked her up at the airport, I teased her a bit about her luggage because she had two suitcases, plus a good sized carry-on. After all, she was only staying for five days! She explained that she needed the extra suitcase for the ice packs for her arm )a rather large contraption that held two ice packs that would surround her arm on two sides and a couple of other things. Well, that made perfect sense; I was a bit embarrassed that I teased her.

That night, after dinner and getting settled, we were just talking and such. I went to get something and when I got back to the room, one of the suitcases was sitting on my sofa. She said that what was inside was for me.  I teased her again, asking if something was going to jump out at me.  She said no.  I didn't have a clue what was inside, but I slowly unzipped the case and lifted the lid.  It only took half a second for me to recognize immediately what the case contained.  I threw my arms around my Little Sis and started to cry.

Of course, it was our family treasure!  It never occurred to me that that would be inside.  It stunned me but made me very happy and of course, I cried for happy.  My Little Sis brought me the best possible gift.

By now, you have probably figured out what it contained.  That case held all of our family photographs going back years and years, even before I was born.  Pictures of my grandparents, my mom's brothers and sisters and cousins.  There were pictures of old boyfriends, old wedding photos, and photos of events from my childhood and then much later from Little Sis's childhood.  It was our family history in photos.  As I said, it was a treasure beyond price.

Over the course of years, several attempts were made to identify, date, and sort all the photos.  Invariably, however, we would get distracted by just looking at the photos and hearing the stories that went with them and the sorting project would go uncompleted.  Mom did, at some point, sort and date most of the photos by year.  But many of them remained unidentified.  We always thought we would get to it one day.

After Dad's death and Mom's declining health and move to a nursing facility, Little Sis had all of Mom's things put into storage where they remained until a couple of years after her death.  Little Sis ultimately removed them from storage and kept them, still in the canvas bag, in her home in Phoenix.  And there they sat.  I think it was two years ago that Little Sis made copies of some of the photos for me.  As I had no photos at all from my childhood or of some of the relatives, this was a big thing to me and I was grateful.  Still, there were many more old photos that I remembered, but hadn't seen for over 25 years.

I stayed up three nights in a row until 3:00 in the morning, just looking at them and remembering.   There are a very few that are from the early 1920's making them over 80 years old!  Most are from the 1930's to the mid 1950's.  Some of them made me laugh, some made me teary, but they all filled me with joy. 

Most of the people in those photos are gone now, but they will be with me always.   For us, our family heritage is memories of  "The Way We Were" and these photos are truly a treasure.

Mem'ries light the corners of my mind,
Misty water-colored mem'ries
of the way we were.

Scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind,
Smiles we gave to one another for the way we were.

Can it be that it was all so simple then?
Or has time rewritten every line?
If we had the chance to do it all again,
Tell me, would we, could we?

Mem'ries may be beautiful and yet
What's too painful to remember,
We simply choose to forget.
So it's the laughter we will remember
Whenever we remember
The way we were,
The way we were

What a wonderful thing for my baby sister to do for me. I love her to pieces anyway, but this was more than I ever expected.   She is the real treasure beyond price! 

I love you Little Sis, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart!


(If I can figure out how to do it, I'll try to scan a couple of them to include here. NOTE: Darn!  Didn't work, I'll try again tomorrow.)

"Little Kid Sister of Mine"

After five wonderful days of visiting, shows, memories, hugs, and lots of laughing, we dropped off that "Little Kid Sister of Mine" at the airport about four hours ago.  Her visit was just the best!  The only thing that could have made it better is if we had been able to convince her to stay longer or even better, to move here to Austin.  Despite my very best efforts, she had to return to Phoenix.  But I'll keep working on her!

We crammed a lot into those five days she was here.  Wednesday evening we talked and caught up on all sorts of things that tend to be overlooked when you only communicate by phone, email, or Facebook.  Thursday was Maddie-the-Great's class play and D, the Great Aunt, was able to see it!  That made M-t-G very excited!  My pick-up rehearsal was cancelled for that night, so I was able to go too! 

It was a darling show with the entire fifth grade participating.  They recreated the songs and characters from "School House Rock",  a TV kid's program most of their parents grew up with.   And, yes, they included "Conjunction Junction"!  It was a very cute program and the kids were great.  M-t-G sang in the chorus and her Mom and Dad and Grammy and Great Aunt D were pleased as punch to be there!

We went out for dinner afterward and talked and laughed some more!

Friday Little Sis and I did a little bit of thrift shopping and then after dinner she came to see my show and she enjoyed it.  We hung around with the cast for a bit after the show and I think she got a feel for what I mean when I chatter on about theater folks! 

Saturday afternoon, Mikey cooked for us and we had a real family dinner, just like old times.  Afterward, Ratchlet, T.A., and Little Sis came to see the show (seeing it twice is definite proof she loves me! lol!) while M-t-G stayed here and played Nerf wars (or something!) with her Poppa. 

Today, we all got together for lunch and our last chance for chatting and catching up.  Then off to the airport we went!  Little Sis should be arriving home before too long.  We had a wonderful visit and I am so very glad that she was able to stay for five whole days!

I'm sure Little Sis will be glad to get back to her own home and her own bed.  But, if I could, I'd get her back here permanently.  I think my best tactic would be to work on my niece and nephew to convince one or both of them to move to Austin, then getting my sister here would be a slam dunk!!

Now I must admit, just reading over the above, the visit doesn't sound all that interesting or challenging, but, au contraire, my friends, au contraire!  I mentioned awhile back that Little Sis fell and broke her wrist.  Well, the break was much worse than I realized.  Her hand was pretty much disconnected from her arm!   She has three pins sticking out of her arm inside the cast.   She brought her x-ray to show us.  Major EEK!! 

Even after nine days, she is still in a lot of pain and had to ice her arm a couple of times a day.  She was taking Ibuprofen to ease the pain and bring down the swelling.  And several times a days I would see her face go kind of pale, she'd go still, her eyes closed, and I'd hear a quick intake of breath, and I knew that somehow she had hit it, or move it, or someone had bumped into it.  You could just see how much it hurt!!  It was painful to see!  And there wasn't anything we could do but wait for it to go away!  Poor thing!

Even though she is right handed and she broke the left wrist, there are lots of things she cannot do!  I helped her with her socks and sneakers every day.  I washed her hair for her.  Someone had to open sugar packets for her and on and on.  She had gotten to the point that she could dress herself as long as she wore something that buttoned down the front!  I don't know how she is managing by herself!

One of the reasons we couldn't talk her into staying longer (because she will be off work for 4-6 weeks!!), is that those pins I mentioned have to be "tapped in" by the doctor on Tuesday.  "Tapped in???"  Seriously??   OOOOWWWWWWIIIIIEEEE!  OW, OW, OW!  That makes my tummy go all wonky just to think about.  Icky, icky, pooh!

So this whole trip was a real challenge for her.  But that just makes me all the more grateful that she came anyway!  You are a champ, kiddo!  I was so glad that you came and I'm sooo sorry that your arm pained you so much in the process.  All her life Little Sis has been a joy in my life!  "That Little Kid Sister of Mine" is a great sister and I'm immensely glad that she's mine!

So, thanks Little Sis!  Having you here was a real treat.  It was great to see you.  I hope your arm gets better very, very soon.   And I know that this puts the ball directly in my court and that tables have turned!  (In other words, it's my turn to visit her!)  I'll try to manage a visit someday before too long, but I'll try to be sure that it is with two "whole" arms!

Love you bunches, Little Sis!



P.S.

So, would you like to hear about the enormous bonus gift that came along with Little Sis's visit??  Well, come back tomorrow and I'll tell you!

A Capella

Okay. I know I've been very remiss in writing but you all know the reasons why.  I can sum it up in two words....show business!  Only two more weeks and it will be done (at which point I will become depressed for a while...just a little warning.  lol!)

Even though there are words actually appearing in my blog space with today's date, this isn't really a blog post.  This is more of a "I can't believe it" post.  Have you ever had one of those moments?? 

My sister is arriving on Wednesday, so I am "sprucing up the house and sweeping out the bed" ("Steel Magnolias").  One of the chores I had to do was to finish up some laundry that I have been putting off.  There really wasn't much but it was all blouses and shirts....with buttons.  I hate hanging up shirts and blouses 'cuz you have to button at least some of the buttons ( I swear buttons shrink over time and so do the holes they are supposed to fit through!!), and get the collar to lay just right.  It's just a pain.  I'm not really a detail person for this kind of thing.

I debated if I should split the load, but there really wasn't that much.  It all needed to get done so I chucked it all in the washer, added soap, hit the cold water cycle, and went on my merry way.  A pattern I have repeated a gazillion times over the course of the 50+ years I have been doing laundry.

When the cycle finished, I started to put the stuff in the dryer.  But then I noticed a pink shirt.  I don't own a pink shirt.  Uh-oh!  I pulled out a few more things and found another pink shirt and a pink-ish blouse.  About this time I started to get a headache.  Down at the bottom of the washer was one of my favorite blouses....a salmon colored 100% silk shirt that I just love.  A 100% silk shirt that has been dry cleaned in the past.  Oh crap!  I didn't even realize it was in that bundle.

Did I mention that I mixed together whites and colors?  I have done that before and it was okay.  But I never washed the salmon-color shirt before.   So I now had three pink shirts and I don't even like pink very much!

The pink sisters are currently going through another cycle; this time with bleach.  Hopefully this will return them to their pristine white!  (Well, I've got my fingers crossed!)

I'm afraid the salmon colored, 100% silk, wonderful shirt that I loved may not recover.

The only bona fide good news is that none of Mikey's shirts were in the load!   Whew!  He REALLY wouldn't like to have pink shirts.

I can't believe it!  How could I not have caught the salmon shirt?  I mean it's practically orange!!Arrrggg!