“We’re becoming the culture of the meaningless.”
– Marianne Williamson
This quote is a painful reminder, but a good one because it’s true, of how much time is spent on absolutely unimportant things.
I have to start thinking about more of my days with this quote in mind.
Quick Highlights From A Week In The Life Of A Dad and Artistic Director!
– I really love producing plays with good teams of people. This week has been an example of why!
– So this week a neighbor kid taught my 7 year old son a curse word. You know, the big one… starts with F, ends with soap in mouth? So my son teaches it to a classmate, and gets caught. Good times, good times.
– We’re so close to solidifying our season that I’m getting really excited about announcing it. I love it!
– This week was Maggie’s talent show (she was AWESOME!), more soccer practice for Max (why do groups of boys insist on trying to hit each other with soccer balls as hard as they can, over and over?), “Pastries for Parents” where the parents go into the school cafeteria for an hour BEFORE SCHOOL to sit and have donuts with their kids… why the school would want to load up 7 year old kids with sugar before school is beyond me, but I’m not teaching, so okeeydoke!
– Working on solidifying my schedule from July 2008 through June 2009, and it’s looking busy. If it all goes as scheduled, it’ll be 6 shows in 11 months. Fortunately, a couple are remounts, but still… gonna be fun! And hopefully lucrative!
– Lost came back last night – I love that show!
Today, be a Superhero, and recycle something.
Also, check out Google’s home page in honor of Earth Day!
Hey, the Tigers won on Monday! Now they’re only about 6 games below .500 – which is the saddest thing ever in sports, ever, and I mean ever, except possibly for the time I swung so hard at a pitch in little-league that I spun around and fell down and the catcher laughed in my face, and the ump yelled at him and told him to be sportsmanlike which made me even MORE embarassed. Yep, it’s almost as sad as that.
I was in the grocery store a couple of days ago, and had one of those “Dad” moments that sort of rocks your world for a couple of days.
Walking through the store, in a little bit of a hurry, I was just zipping along and being annoyed because they’ve rearranged things AGAIN and where the hell’s the damned soymilk?!
As I turned a corner I nearly bumped into a guy about my age, carrying a young boy on his hip and a grocery basket in the other hand. They were clearly enjoying some dad/son time – the boy was about 5 and since the dad was holding boy in one hand and basket in the other, they had made a game out of the dad telling his son which item to grab off the shelf, and the boy would intentionally grab the wrong one, and they would laugh. Or just as the boy was about to grab the box, the dad would step back from the shelf so the boy couldn’t reach it anymore and they would laugh. Simple, fun, turning a mundane task into some quality giggle time.
As I watched this moment, I felt my annoyance at not having found the soymilk slipping away, and I found myself getting a little sad as I realized that another kid milestone is here, and I hadn’t even noticed it.
I think the time of carrying my kids on my hip is just about gone.
Maggie’s 10, and she’s just too big to carry on my hip for any length of time anymore. And Max is following shortly behind. I mean, sure, I can CARRY them – but now it takes some effort. It’s no longer possible to carry them AND a bag of groceries AND still find my keys and get the doors opened – carrying them is a singular task now! I have, thankfully, a couple years left of being able to carry them in, sleeping, after a late car ride home from somewhere. I love that time, when they’re out cold, but as you pick them up from the backseat they wrap their arms and legs around you, and snuggle their nose into your neck. That, and piggy back rides are still a staple of our lives… but even those will start to fade away over the next few years as they grow into that phase of “Less time with parents = good!”.
No, this isn’t a world-ending event. Yes, there are still lots of wonderful things I share with my kids – we invent raps on a regular basis, we share secret handshakes, snuggle time and ice cream time and family game night and movie night and a dozen other things that HOPEFULLY will turn into memories they can hang onto as they grow older… but growing older is just what’s happening.
Today, I picked up my 8-year old and held him several times. Just picked him up and carried him around for a bit, goofing around. And when I did, he would wrap himself around me, and snuggle into my neck.
I suppose I’ll let go when I have to…
…but I’m gonna hold on as long as I can.
Some days you just get the best of both worlds.
On Wednesday we had a great rehearsal at the theatre. Suzi Regan and Annie Martin are leading a wonderful team of women in the creation of our new play. They’re doing wonderful work, and the energy around the building is terrific.
There’s just something really special in putting together a team of good folks to create a piece completely from scratch. So… A good day at work.
Then in the evening we went to my 7 year old’s soccer practice. One of the most beautiful evenings of the year – 70 degrees, a nice breeze. While Max ran around the field with his team, Maggie spent the hour flying her kite, and Jeanne and I (with Sneakers on the leash) went back and forth cheering for the kite-flyer and the soccer team.
Following this lovely evening, we of course went for ice-cream!
Then today was amazingly similar! A wonderful day at the theatre, followed by going to Maggie’s school to see the 4th Grade Musical, “The Cat & The Rat”. It was wonderfully sweet, and Maggie made a great rat! 🙂 AND, of course, I insisted that we once again celebrate with ice cream!! (I think Jeanne may be right about why I can’t seem to lose weight!)
So – Tony’s advice for the night: Have a productive day, then relax by doing something fun with someone you love… Then eat ice cream!
Man, he’s upset. I wonder if he watched the Tigers lose tonight?
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Your Slogan Should Be |
 Once You Go Tony, You’ll Never Go Back. |
I have no idea what that means, but I like it. *laughing*
Just because it’s been a while since I did these!
This is a great downloadable interview with James Earl Jones from The American Theatre Wing – really worth listening to!
A Boston Red Sox fan/construction worker tries to curse the new Yankee Stadium by burying a Red Sox jersey in the foundation of the new stadium!
This 101-year-old runner takes a cigarette and beer break halfway through his record-breaking run of the London Marathon! (I HAVE to find out what kind of beer he’s been drinking!)
German schoolboy corrects NASA scientists and points out that there’s a much better chance than they thought that the Apophis asteroid will hit the Earth. This can’t be good – I’m gonna stock up on canned goods.
THIS is a ridiculous website that is nothing but pictures of celebrities, but they’ve all had “finger mustaches” drawn on them. I don’t know if I can tell you why I think it’s funny, it just is…
As I announced a while ago, we extended HATE MAIL at Williamston Theatre. It was the first time we’d been able to do that, and as happy as we were about it, it was a little worrisome as well.
Like most of the things we do with our young company, the extension was an experiment…and a risky one. Well, I’m pleased to announce that our experiment was officially a success! We sold more than enough tickets for the extension to pay for itself – in doing so, we added two more weeks of work for a handful of artists, 2 extra weeks of mission-statement-fulfilling performances, and 2 more weeks of folks coming into the building and enjoying being here!
It wasn’t a runaway success, mind you. It took until the matinee show Saturday to be able to say that we’d hit our mark, so it was show 8 of 10 before we’d done it. Still, that leaves us with two performances above and beyond. As much as I want to sell out every seat every night, I’ll take what we got as a nice result for our first time down this particular path!
Friday morning I taught a “Senior Seminar” class at Michigan State University. Had a great time chatting with a bunch of soon-to-graduate theatre students.
Following that, I had our final Understudy rehearsal for HATE MAIL, which went wonderfully!
Then went to see a terrific production of DOUBT at Performance Network Theatre. Man, you just can’t beat a good script teamed with good acting and good directing – plus some fabulous designs – beautiful. Afterwards I went to bar with some friends from the show and had a great time catching up over beer as we watched the Tigers double their season win total to a whopping 2!
Tony Caselli 