Opening Night at the Williamston Theatre went well! I wasn’t there, but I got good reports from everyone involved.

I was at rehearsal for “It Came From Mars” at the Performance Network, so I couldn’t be at “The Smell Of The Kill” tonight. I hate that I had to miss it, but sometimes the schedules just don’t work! (Note to self: Next year, if we do two co-productions, do not do them as back to back productions. It makes my head hurt.)

So, one of the two February openings I’m involved with down, one more to go. We tech “Mars” tomorrow, and preview it on Thursday. It’s been a great process so far, the next few days will be great as we head into our first audiences. Then we’ll learn a ton as we watch the audience watch the show!

So, “Mars” isn’t ready yet, but we’re getting closer – I’m learning a bunch as we work on this one, and still facing a couple of challenges, and I think it’s going to be a great show.

And in the meantime, I’m going to watch Zombieland with my wife and eat some popcorn! 🙂

“Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.”
John Quincy Adams (1767 – 1848)

I danced with my daughter on Saturday evening.

Sure, we had a preview of “The Smell Of The Kill” at the Williamston Theatre, and I’m at most previews. But we’ve also got a good production staff, and an Executive Director who is perfectly capable of stepping in for the Artistic Director in important situations.

And this was an important situation. So I played hooky.

Saturday was the Daddy Daughter Dance at Maggie’s school.

Maggie got all dressed up, she looked beautiful! Jeanne helped her with her dress, and her hair. It was a big date, so I wore my suit – vest and all!

We had a wonderful time, there was a corsage, and cookies and punch, and lots of great music and dancing and…

As we were walking into the dance, holding hands and talking and laughing, I kept coming back to one thought:

This is our last official “Daddy Daughter Dance”.

Oh sure, we’ll dance together. We all dance at home sometimes, we’ll dance at parties… but after this there are no more school sponsored “Dad/Daughter” events.

She’ll be too grown up for all of that.

Soon her dances will be with young men that I’ll be reminding to “drive safe” and “be back in time”, and I’ll be resisting the urge to say “I know where you live, pal.” But I’ll be thinking it.

It was, incredibly, 4 years ago that I wrote this journal entry about another Daddy Daughter Dance. Going back and re-reading it, it’s amazing how much things change while staying the same. You hear that all the time, but every now and then something happens and life just smacks you in the head with a two-by-four and says “SEE! I wasn’t kidding about that whole it goes fast so pay attention thing!”

So fast.

This little girl. When she was just a tiny baby, I could cradle her in the crook of my arm, and we discovered that whenever she’d cry in the middle of the night if I put on John Mellencamp, and dance her slowly around the room, she’d stop crying and fall right asleep. Worked every time. It’s funny, I can’t remember how we discovered that, but I remember it always working.

Only about two years ago, if she was having trouble sleeping, she’d ask “Dad, sing Ivy Twine for me?” That’s not the name of it, but it’s a hymn that I used to sing to the kids, or a portion of a hymn, and I’d pick her up and dance slowly around her room with her and sing until she fell asleep on my shoulder… Tell me why the stars do shine, tell me why the ivy twines, tell me why the sky is so blue, and I will tell you just why I love you…

She’ll be 12 in a couple of weeks, she’s becoming a young woman with her own soundtrack – Hannah Montana and Taylor Swift and dancing around the house and discovering who she wants to be, and that’s a wonderful thing. She’s learning to play the guitar, and can already play a number of cool hip songs that all her friends know the words to, full of the spirit of the world she’s about to enter – lots of teenage angst and personal explorations and that transition that I just wish I could slow down… that transition into a big huge world of independence……and away from the little world where Dad can make everything okay with a dance.

Yeah, listen.  Everybody’s busy.  You’re busy, I’m busy.  We’re busy.

In general, I consider myself the luckiest guy in the world.  I mean, I have the most unbelievably beautiful understanding talented wife a guy could want, and she’s given me two kids that make my heart burst daily.  (In the good way.)  I have a job that I love, and that keeps me busy and challenged.  (In the good way.)  Still, like many folks here on our favorite little green planet, I find myself at the mercy of my own creations, and my calendar fills up just as quickly as the calendar of anyone I know.  We’re all busy.

I write about balance a lot in this online journal.  It’s something I struggle with often, and I know lots of folks do: balancing the various aspects of our lives.  Fitting in all the things we MUST do, with all of the things we SHOULD do, with all of the things we WANT to do… that’s not easy in anyone’s life!

So, let me just say this:

I see a lot of plays.  I attend a lot of events.  I don’t attend everything.  I wish I could.  I can’t.  Sorry.

If I don’t attend your event/play/movie premiere/fundraiser, or rsvp to your Facebook invite, or don’t accept your Farming supplies, or your generous offer to become a member of your mob, or your Fruity drink, or your Shamrock Rain Forest Pillow-Fighting Hug, it’s not because I don’t like you, or don’t like your event, or am against farming, drinking, mobs or hugging shamrock pillows in a rain forest.  It’s because there’s not enough time in the day.  So, to save us both time, just don’t bother sending your flaming emails, your outraged phone calls and you your silly attempts at guilt-tripping me about how much I owe Michigan artists:When it comes to balance, I’m pretty okay on those scales. 

 *****************

Edited to Add:
My blog posts automatically migrate to Facebook, and I got some responses on Facebook that prompted me to post this addendum to the post.  I thought I’d add it here, as well:

I don’t want this post to come off the wrong way -I almost deleted it after typing it – but there’s just not enough time to do all of the things we all want to/should/must do, and I personally feel bad enough about that without being piled on, and I know a lot of other people feel the same way. So while I certainly don’t want to come off like an egotistical prick, I did want to bring it up – it’s a part of our lives, and an important part of the balance I journal about often, and not addressing it felt like wimping out just to avoid potential backlash.  So, I hope no one had their feelings hurt, but I hope that a useful point was made.   🙂

My birthday was terrific, and my birthday get-together was also terrific!  Grizzly Peak has Bitter Tony’s Rye Bitter for a few more weeks, get out there and drink it, and let me know when you do!  🙂

Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Undead – the vampire-meets-Shakespeare film we’ve all been waiting for!!  Check it out!   *laughing*

Rehearsals for It Came From Mars are going very well, we’re having a lot of fun playing with this silly romp!  I think audiences will laugh their butts off at this wonderful cast!

Tomorrow is the "reveal" of the iSlate, or iTablet, or whatever Apple’s new "tablet touch-screen" thing is!  I’m excited to see what this is!  (Yep, can’t help it, I’m a gadget geek!)

Last night I got home in time to take Maggie to her basketball practice, and Max came with me and brought his ball.  While Maggie worked with her team at one of the nets in the gym, Max and I had a great time shooting hoops and playing around at the other end.  The kid is as short as I was at that age, but his shot is getting better, and he’s fast!!  (What?!  Yes, I’m still short.  I make up for it with my rapier wit.  Shut up.)

I got Stephen King’s novel "Under The Dome" for my birthday, and I don’t have a ton of time to read right now, but I just couldn’t resist and read the first 2 chapters last night while laying in bed.  I’m not sure that was a good idea, because now I want to stop doing anything else and just read the rest of it!  D’oh!

Complexity is the natural state of things. Sophistication lies in your ability to SIMPLIFY complexity. It lies in your ability to make sense of the world around you. You can’t do everything. Understand what’s important and what’s not. Pick your focus and act.
-Doug Sundheim

Less bullshit, more awesomeness.
-Annie Martin

There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.
-Leo Tolstoy

A student asked Soen Nakagawa during a meditation retreat, "I am very discouraged. What should I do?"
Soen replied, "Encourage others."
— Story from Essential Zen

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
Mark Twain