Chickens and Unschooling

At the end of October, H and I saw Singing in the Rain at our little theatre in the round.

It was fabulous. The male lead was really good. What they did with the staging was insane; they even managed to make it rain. During the show, I realized, I do enjoy dancing in my musicals. It's a good thing I brought H, instead of M, he doesn't enjoy the dancing.

I had always thought I'd seen the movie before, but only a little into the musical I realized it was only that trick of the mind where you're familiar with just enough of it to be sure you've seen it. I had that same experience with The Time Machine at a convention several years back. At the time, both M and I were certain we'd seen it before, but we were both fooled by its saturation into pop culture.

I grew up watching musicals.

Live.

Mind you, they were usually seats so far back we sometimes used binoculars to better see the actors.

It was also an outdoor theatre, and my Mom always packed snacks and lemonade.

It was a very important part of my childhood, and I feel very grateful for having had that opportunity.

I have always wanted my kids to have the chance to grow up with musicals, like I did.

We've taken the kids to musicals, off and on, since they were each old enough to comport themselves appropriately, and when it seemed we wouldn't be wasting our money bringing them to something they wouldn't enjoy.

The whole family is hooked.

And now, since Hubby and I don't spend money on very many things, we've agreed to keep taking, the now grown kids, to musicals whenever possible.

Recently we found a little theatre in the round that does a really good job with musicals; casting lovely singers, decent actors, and doing an amazing job with their limited space.

Bonus points, the cost of tickets is lower than the other theatres we've been to.

Even better, they do mid-week, evening showings, which fits around both girls' work schedules. We haven't yet managed to drag the boy to this particular theatre, but in a few months, the whole family is going to see Anastasia the Musical. Possibly my second favorite Musical.

Also, because it is such a small theatre, there are no bad seats.

Boy is off on his camping weekend.

The last couple of hours of packing were controlled chaos.

He didn't have to be too thorough on the food end, since this is an organized Amtgard event, and he bought the meal ticket.

He is, however, outfitted with coffee (with his new percolator), some canned soups, and a camp stove.

S is going out Saturday, and will depend on him for the camp stove and coffee; she didn't buy the meal ticket.

M and I have the place to ourselves until mid Sunday. Good thing I have a very needy kitten (Fireball) to fill up that empty nest void.

Going forward I should get a nice break, at least for a little bit.

In the past month I had to get 2 kittens fixed; this included the extra complication of Magic Missile and his heart murmur. Both are doing splendidly now, thank goodness.

The girls and I got to see a production of Dear Evan Hansen. Fabulous. It likely puts it in my top five of stage musicals.

The family did our annual trek to Ren Faire. This was complicated by S's car breaking down on the way to our house. M and C rescued her, towed her car to our favorite mechanic, and got back in time for us to only lose out on about 2 hours of our fair going experience.

S's car, Dori, was declared deceased. So we went to clean in our tonight. Perhaps break was too optimistic, as there will be car shopping in our future.

Turns out you can still feed 2 people for less than 20 bucks at In-n-Out.

H finally had to put her truck out to pasture, so we spent several hours cleaning in out (it's amazing how many quarters can be eaten by a truck seat).

Afterwards I bought her lunch.

Tomorrow M and I are taking her car shopping. She's still aiming for a stickshift, but is likely downgrading from a truck to a hatchback.

My daughters got a kitten a few weeks ago.

Click the link to Twitter to see a picture from today.

Started with a trip to the bank along with bringing the boy to Walmart to return a mouse and headset he bought last week and was not happy with.

Then a chance to snag M and go out for the boy's long overdue Birthday lunch. First try, sticker shock at a Mongolian stir-fry. That shifted us back to Bulgogi, since their lunch special price was better than the Mongolian stir-fry place, so no longer seemed as ridiculous to me. Turns out, the Bulgogi place had a "no public restroom" sign in the window, so we ended up at the giant ass pizza slice place instead (honestly, much more my speed). The three of us had pizza and soda for barely more than one of us would have cost at either of the other places.

We then went shoe shopping for the boy. A million years later he and M ended up with shoes.

On the way home we hit a Best Buy so the boy could get an upgraded headset. This took some serious dithering as well, but eventually we made it back home with a headset for the boy.

I'm down to one kid living at home this week. S is in the process of moving out, and while she has a ton more cleaning and moving to do, to be actually finished with the process, the plan, this week, is for her to stay at the new place till Friday. She finally has the "grown up" job, and needs to live closer to work.

While I expected to feel sad about this development, at the moment I'm mostly just relieved that I can plan dinners with zero regards to what she would like to eat. At least till Friday.

Then again, for a very long time, Mondays have been her late days, and I'm not used to having her around till at least 10pm.

Youngest child driving himself to his new job.

So it's looking like S has gotten her first grown-up job. She's been background checked, had to pee in a cup, and has orientation on Tuesday. It's not quite welding, since they wanted their welders to have a few years experience. It is, however, in an air-conditioned shop, second shift, 4 tens, 20 minutes from here, and more than she's being paid at DQ.

Word of advice to aspiring young mechanical technicians: when attending a job fair, choose something other than a halter top and cutoff shorts to wear.