and just like that, the theater where we've spent the last two weeks is empty again. in less than four hours, we took down all the scenery, the lights, the props, everything, and left a bare stage. it's sad to see something disappear so quickly, but it was certainly a good run.

even including the fact that i lost my voice for the first part of the second weekend. during the brush up rehearsal (we rehearse on thursday of the second weekend to make sure we remember what we're doing before performing again on friday), i performed a very complicated version of charades to give cast necessary information. they were all amused, and i was just glad to have enough of a voice to be able to call the show over headset on friday.

april is national poetry month. this means that most of the kids are writing poems for homework. which also means that they are using me for inspiration. one of the girls was writing an acrostic with my name and came to me looking for a good "u" word. we ended up looking in a dictionary under u - who knew how many u words are negative? ugly, unwanted, etc. we finally went with "useful."

another girl was writing biographical poetry where she was given phrases to complete. first the name and then "wishes to..." and "dreams of..." i found that it was difficult to come up with answers to those questions - and then to find an answer that would be easily written and a safe answer to give a nine year old girl. what do i believe in? what do i dream of? i went with hope and ice cream respectively (although i suppose you could reverse them too...) it's not strictly true, but it served my purpose well enough.