fashion is danger

I love me some Flight of the Conchords, and this one’s about fashion! Thanks to Sadie, one of my 5th graders, for sending this to me. 🙂

how to tie a bowtie, courtesy of marriage equality

This is cute, and funny. My hubby uses it whenever he needs to tie a bow-tie. He’s been tying a bow-tie quite frequently lately, as he’s playing a character called “The Scorekeeper” in a local theatre production. (The Scorekeeper never leaves the house without his dapper bow-tie and cardigan.)

If you live in Seattle, my hubby will perform tonight at 11pm at Theatre Schmeatre (2125 3rd Ave. in Belltown).

a makeshift sewing table, and the sore thighs to show for it

This was my sewing set-up while I waited for our dining room table paint to dry. I got my machine back from the spa (woohoo!) and had promised myself not to sew until the table project was D-O-N-E, but I did not wait and instead huddled over my machine in a very awkward position until my thighs started to burn. Three days of soreness…but oh it was worth it! You’re not truly committed to something until you’re ready to suffer physically for it.

Sweet B is quite healthy. In fact, unbeknownst to me, there was nothing wrong with her! I had threaded my upper thread incorrectly. I don’t know how I could have done anything differently than I’ve done a hundred times, but there it is. So, 150 bucks later I learned a valuable lesson: Don’t sew in a hurry. When you sew in a hurry you make silly mistakes.

What had I been in a hurry for? Hubby was performing a three-minute stand-up comedy routine at a nearby bar and I wanted to get there on time to see him. Sewing got prioritized higher than my hubby, and that’s why the sewing gods thought fit to punish me. (Or was it the comedy gods…?)

Anyway, I don’t mind the 150 bucks because Sweet B was long overdue for a routine spa treatment anyway. I consider it preventative money well spent.

things i’m going to do on winter break

1. Get up at the same time as hubby, even though I’m on break, bright and early!
2. Walk hubby to work so I get exercise.
3. Go to fitness room every day to build my little tiny muscles.
4. Make hot chocolate.
5. Put up Christmas decorations. Some people do this before the week of Christmas, but my new excuse is, Christmas starts on the 25th.
6. Mod Podge the entryway.
7. Get progress reports done early.
8. Sew my very first blouse!
9. Get some blog posts queued up!
10. Make granola and give it to our neighbors.

I have never had such a thoroughly engaging year of teaching! I get home and I’m completely beat. Who has time to put up a Christmas tree when you’re staging the Revolutionary War for 24 4th/5th graders?! My hubby has been helping me. He has been King John Bubberton III, king of Great Bubberton. He visited the kids twice and sends video dispatches to them. At first he was a generous and well-loved king, but then he started taxing the kids (to pay off a Pizza Party he threw for them). The kids declared independence last Friday and wrote him a long letter. This week they’ve been enlisting the French teacher’s help to write a letter to the French asking for support. Each day they draw a slip of paper from an envelope to find out if they survived or died in battle that day.

On top of all that, hubby is going to do his very first stand-up comedy at an open mic night, so he’s practicing three times in front of me each night. I give him pointers. Turns out I’m good at giving others pointers on their delivery! I’m even toying (very lightly) with the idea of trying stand-up myself.

And then there’s the small matter of not having gotten people gifts yet. Every year, I tell myself, “This shall be the year I make gifts for everyone!” And then I don’t. I found a Christmas gift for my Secret Santa at work, but just by the skin of my teeth. Now to think about my family…

And yet I can’t say any of this stresses me out, because life feels so full! Every day is exciting and exhausting and exhilarating. Will it be nice to have a break? Absolutely. But every day is nice. Every day is a good day to be alive.

postcard from: edinburgh fringe festival

With blind luck, we decided to visit Edinburgh in August, and later discovered that the Edinburgh Fringe Festival would be going on during our visit (actually about four different festivals happening all at the same time). The festival came to be the biggest part of our trip.

Thousands of shows, all over the city, at all hours of the day, all days of the week. Dramatic plays, stand-up comedy, variety shows, book readings, musicians, DJ’s, acrobats, yo-yo performers, you name it. On the Royal Mile, performers promoted their shows by handing out fliers, or performed small parts of their work to entice us to come see their paid performance.

We spent a great part of our time walking to and fro, seeing free stand-up comedy shows. Favorite title of a show we saw: “Richard Dawkins Does Not Exist,” in which the two stand-ups uses mathematics to prove that Richard Dawkins…well, does not exist. Best overall stand-up experience: we saw Hal Sparks at 11pm on a Sunday night, and only 5 other people were in the audience. As a result, Hal came out afterwards and did an impromptu performance of a Pearl Jam song, talked to us for awhile, then asked if we wanted to get some food. We ate crepes in a beer garden resembling a medieval market, and talked about one of my favorite movies, Joe Versus the Volcano.

At another stand-up show, the comedian came into the room looking very large, then proceeded to remove one layer of clothing at a time, with props hidden in each layer, until he had used all the props and was dressed only in a unitard. He chose a guy named Reed from the audience to come up and spray him with spray paint, then took us all for a walk out of the venue and into a courtyard, where he asked Reed to hit him with a riding crop, then ran away and hopped on the back of a passing bicyclist’s bike. That was the strangest thing we saw on our trip.

We went to a reading by David Sedaris, and baked in a tiny room watching a play about a couch that is possessed and goes by the name of “Bob Hoskins.” In a club basement at 3am, we danced to Machine Drum.

And walking to our New York to Edinburgh flight terminal, we saw Kristen Schaal in front of us, getting on the same flight for Edinburgh. We chatted with her for a little while, like two dorks.

We really were spoiled for choice on this trip, and a little sad that we couldn’t have free comedy shows at home. That combined with the lack of pubs here in Seattle made it a difficult return home. But what can you do? I think travel is meant to make us envy other places and other ways of living.