A song in my heart and a tear in my eye

Show time = stress time, and for me stress time = dredging up old emotions and feeling all kinds of sad and melancholy.

It stands to reason, since we just had the anniversaries of all 3 grandparents' passing, that I'd be missing them tonight. This song kept coming up for me as I sat here working on variousAlice projects. So I listened, had a good cry, and then decided to share.

Oops!

Well, so much for "blog-a-day" in April. Perhaps may will be a better month. Besides, that rhymes - Blog-a-day in May.

For now, here's a quick recap on where we are:

• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland opens on Thursday closes Saturday.
• We still have stuff to finish - yikes!
• But the kids are doing really well and I think we have a show!
• The doggies are great
• Jacko is still crazy smart
• We've discovered Cody's pretty dumb. Good news, he's learning. Bad news, he's a really, really slow learner
• We are taking some of the blame for Cody's slow learning. We haven't had the time to work with him like we did Jacko. As soon as the show is over he'll get more of my time and attention.
• 42 student school days left.

Growing friendships

When Ricky and I were planning our wedding, I came across TheKnot.com and joined the message boards there. It was a great community at the time, and many of us stuck together but moved off the boards after our weddings. You see, we were the first wave of brides to use The Knot and they hadn't yet developed a place for newlyweds, so we made our own (The Knot has since developed both The Nest and The Bump, for expectant mothers). We moved to an MSN board...and then another MSN board...and then another. Then MSN shut down so we moved to Lefora. We got a lot of viruses from Lefora so we ended up buying our own domain, which is hosted by one of our members. It's a great community most of the time.

Anyway, a year or so ago I discovered that one of the members lives about 15 minutes from us. We started chatting and becoming friendly. We became Facebook friends, and then last summer she and her other half bought our dresser from us. It was the first time we'd met them, and we all stood in the driveway and talked for at least an hour.

Since then we've developed a great friendship with them. They are such a blessing in our lives, and I hope that we are to them as well. We enjoy many of the same things, have many of the same opinions and outlooks on life, but have vastly different backgrounds and experiences. It has been so fun getting to know them. I look forward to so many more game nights, dinners out, and great conversations.

Sprouting Hair

No, this isn't about filling in a bald spot or growing hair in places we shouldn't. It's about, of all things, our dogs.

Cody and Jacko are both black, medium length haired dogs. They both shed like crazy. Not just in the spring, but all. the. time. Which means we have insane amounts of hair in our house. We sweep and vacuum, vacuum and sweep, but it just never seems to go away. And it sprouts up everywhere. I find furballs in the most random places, like in a dresser drawer.

We've been trying to keep up on it. Those who know us well know we are not the world' best house keepers...not by a long shot. But we are trying. It's hard though, when you sweep it all up and it all looks great...and then not 10 seconds later you see a little doggie tumbleweed blowin' down the hall.

Perhaps a razor would be best?

NaBloPoMo for April

I probably shouldn't, but I'm going to try writing once a day every day for the month of April. With a show opening April 21, this should be interesting. The NaBloPoMo theme for April is "Sprouts," so I may try to stay loosely to that theme...or not. We'll see!

Catching up

I'm not going to write a lot because I'm tired and it's late and Ricky's in bed and I really just want to crawl in and cuddle, but I feel the need to make a quick list of things on which I need to blog. So, here goes.

• We got a second dog
• I'm working on show #2 for the year at school
• I got new glasses
• IKEA is cool

I guess that's it. I feel like there are a lot more things. I really need to commit to blogging daily; perhaps I'll make that commitment for April. I do promise to at least come back and update you on Cody-Bear, our new pup.

A Leisurely Swim

I am crazy. My coworkers are crazy. We are middle school teachers, we are certifiably insane. So insane that we voluntarily jumped in a river today.

That's right. We jumped in the Columbia river by choice, in the middle of February. The water was a balmy 39 degrees. We went for a short swim, then ran to change, and promised we'd do it again next year.

Let's start at the beginning. A couple months ago, I got a note from my coworker asking if I'd join her Polar Plunge team. The thing with Barb is no one can say no to her. She's not intimidating, but she's our work mommy, and we just can't say no. So when she asked, I suddenly forgot how much I hate to be cold, how being wet and cold is about the worst possible thing in my world, and said I'd do it.

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago. Suddenly I realized the month of the plunge had arrived. Until that point, I'd been blissfully in denial of what I'd committed to. I quickly did my fundraising and thanks to my generous friends and family raised over $250 in donations for Special Olympics Oregon. I got my gear together and made plans with my coworkers. And suddenly, Feb 12 was upon us and there was no turning back.

There was an early registration the evening of Feb 11, but I had an improv night at school so I couldn't go. One of my dear friends and coworkers offered to go to the morning registration with me, even though she had done the early registration and it meant getting up early. What a great friend! So this morning I got up and drove to her house, bearing coffee. We packed all our stuff into her car and took off for Broughton Beach on the Oregon side of the Columbia River.

Registration started at 8:30 and we got there at 8:45 as we'd been warned of long lines. Apparently we were the only ones concerned about the wait because we walked right up to the registration table. I was signed in and ready to go by 9 am! The plunge didn't start until 11, so we had a couple of hours to kill.

We spent the first half hour playing the Wii game "Rabbids" in the Game Truck. How cool, and what a fun idea! We killed a lot of time and had a blast doing it. About the time we realized there was a line starting to form for entrance to the truck, we got a text from Barb, our fearless leader, saying she and her husband, also a coworker, had arrived. We met them and then made the rounds of food. We had clam chowder provided by Salty's restaurant, macaroni and cheese provided by Noodles and Co., hot chocolate provided by Clear Wireless. There was also ribs from Dave's Famous BBQ and pizza from Papa Murphy's, but we skipped out on those - we were too full from the other stuff! After the food we played rock band, provided by 98.7 KUPL. After one song we realized it was time to line up, so we headed for the plunge.

I don't really know how to describe the plunge. It's terrifying and awesome, amazing and difficult all at once. The anticipation was definitely worse than the plunge itself. I had that "oh crap" feeling in my stomach, the same one I get before big roller coaster rides. When our team name was called, we ran down to the beach, arranged our towels and coats so we could immediately warm ourselves upon getting out of the water, and lined up to plunge.

5...4...3...2...1!

Suddenly I was in near-freezing water. The next thing I knew, my shoes came off my feet (darn crocs!) but I knew I had to just keep moving forward. I swam out to the divers, and about the time I got to them (the turn around point), I started having trouble breathing. I turned and swam as hard as I could for the shore, knowing that getting out of the water was the only thing that would make my breathing return to normal. On the way back in I managed to snag my shoes. I got out of the water and ran for my towel, wrapping it and my robe around my shoulders. It sounds crazy, but getting that on provided instant relief. We grabbed our things and headed for the changing tents. On our way, one of my coworkers got stopped for an interview by a TV station!

Once we were changed the adrenaline started to wear off and we all headed for home. It was exhausting and incredible, thrilling, bone chilling, and something that I am so proud of. I still can't believe I did it. I hate the cold, I hate being wet and cold even more, and yet I managed it. We're already planning for next year!