Show

I did a double trapeze act in a little benefit show last Saturday. My partner is actually one of my campers from Long Lake and we had a blast. It's amazing how much fun hanging out with a 13 year old can be. And even though we really only had one full day of rehearsal (I flew down to her house in LA a couple of weeks before the show so we could put a routine together) the final product looked really good and some other gigs in LA may come out of it.

I realized again, like I do every time I am fortunate enough to perform aerially, that I don't want to do anything else. Ever. Performing is it. Too bad I'm not better at it.

I'm not sure that anyone's reading this anymore, but...

Just in case there's someone there, our first Parents' Weekend show of the summer, Circus Arcade, was this morning and it went really really well. Which was especially fantastic because the camp show yesterday had a lot of hiccups. Now what happens is that most of these kids, including some of my favorite campers of all time who are aging out this year, are leaving tomorrow and we get a whole new batch on Monday. Some kids will stay on for six weeks, too. Tuesday we start our casting process all over again, and then we begin putting together our second session show which is based around a turn-of-the-century circus and some very mischievous triplets.

But for now, I'm exhausted.

A Day in the Life

Sometimes people who don't work here are interested in what a typical day is like for me. So here's my daily schedule for this session:

7:15am -- Wake up, shower, take the dog out, etc.
8:00am -- Breakfast
9:00am -- Morning Meeting
9:15am -- First Period (Aerial Cradle--I teach)
10:15am -- Second Period (Double Trapeze--I teach and base)
11:15am -- Third Period (Adagio -- I teach and catch)
12:15pm -- Lunch
12:45pm -- Rest Hour (Usually I rest, but sometimes we have meetings or work to do during this time of day)
1:45pm -- Afternoon Meeting
2:00pm -- Fourth Period (Flying Trapeze--I teach and catch)
3:00pm -- Fifth Period (Spanish Web--I teach)
4:00pm -- Snack
4:15pm -- Sixth Period (Period off)
5:15pm -- Seventh Period (The five circus intensive kids work out with me)
6:15pm -- Dinner
(After dinner I'm usually off until around 8pm, but sometimes we have evening rehearsals and other times we do open flying trapeze for campers or staff)
8:00pm -- Circus Staff Meeting
10:00pm -- Sometimes I'm still working, other times I'm off. One night per week I'm on duty in the office until midnight.
12ish -- Sleep

That's how pretty much every day goes this session (it'll change in a week once session two starts) except on Mondays, which are my days off, and Sundays when we get to wake up an hour later and the afternoon is full of longer, full-cast rehearsals and circus maintenance.

They are full, exhausting days. But it's great to be so busy and to be able to sleep at night without having to take Tylenol PM (which I have to use every night at home in order to get any sleep at all).

Today was my second day off this summer and Chris and I went to Glens Falls to get some last minute stuff she needed for costumes. It was really hot out, so we mainly hung out at the mall even after she was finished shopping, then we went to a movie (we saw Wanted. Angelina Jolie is it's only redeeming quality, just so you know). Now we're back in Long Lake and Chris is at the bar and I'm at camp in our cabin finishing up some real world stuff (bills) before falling back into the normal schedule tomorrow.

Music through the Trees

The kids have been here for almost a week already and session one is in full swing. I've got seventy five kids in the show, and five intensive kids who light up my days.

The weather was very bad, but now it's better than we would normally expect in first session. Outside my door the sun is setting brilliantly and I can hear my friend Zippy playing guitar and singing through the trees between her cabin and mine.

Chris may have broken her foot. We'll know in the next day or so. She has a walking splint/boot thing and she's on crutches. It's kind of a bad scene. Good thing her staff is fantastic.

My staff is too.

Oh, and I caught a kid the other day on flying trapeze. That was the first catch since the one when I hurt myself last summer. It feels good to be back in the saddle, so to speak. The memory of my injury still looms large, however, and makes what's going on with Chris even more poignant as I can totally relate to her frustration and anxiety.

More later...

Camping It Up

It's been such a long time, I know! I turned 30, was in an aerial show, made it through another quarter of school, went to my brother's graduation from business school, started taking lessons with a new aerial teacher, helped (in a very small way) to get the new Circus Contraption show on its feet, and now I'm at camp again.

Chrissymine got here ten days earlier than I did this year and she's doing pre-camp work. I arrived on Tuesday night (after a LONG trip through some rather apocalyptic weather) and now I have a few days before the bulk of the counselors get here in which to prepare and work out and write a chapter of my dissertation. What? Yeah, we'll see how that goes.

It's beautiful here, by the way. The black flies are horrifically bad, however. I have four HUGE bites on the back of my neck that I'm pretty sure I received within an hour of being here, yet they refuse to get any smaller. But camp's beautiful nonetheless.

I am the new proud mama of a BRAND SPANKING NEW CUSTOM MADE FLYING TRAPEZE NET. Awwwwww yeah. I can't wait to try it out. It's so white it burns the eyes. I want to marry it. But that's not even legal in Canada! (rimshot!)

Chelsea is here too, this year. We weren't about to leave her at home again for an entire summer. Especially after her being hit by a car last year. Yikes. Right now she's on the bed with me. We finally trained her not to get up on our bed at home, and we got to camp and that all went out the window. Oh well, what can you do?

So that's my little update. Not much going on yet, I'm afraid. I'll keep an eye out for stuff to write about and I'll try to be better about blogging this time around (I always say that!).

My bug bites and I are off to take a run.

Hell no! I won't go!

So I'm seriously contemplating putting together a hunger strike/sit-in/flash mob in protest of my looming 30th birthday. Because, seriously? I didn't think I would ever live to see the day (I'm not morbid, just willfully ignorant) and I refuse--REFUSE, I TELL YOU--to accept it. Somehow most of my friends have already passed this milestone, and every time I mention my anxiety about it, they are like, "SHUT! UP!" Which does not help at all, really.

In other news, what is WITH all of the women out there wearing tights as pants? Tights as pants are allowed in certain situations, sure (ballet class, aerial class, while running, biking, etc.), but NOT in 90% of public venues. Okay? Cover yourself, ladies! I'm embarrassed for you!

Hey! Ever participated in something that brings you a lot of joy only to have it ruined by the other people who take part in it, too? Am I hinting at something? Maybe I am and maybe I AM.

The Beginning of Emma

Emma was working on doing one thing at a time. She could no longer retrieve the mail while walking the dog or unpack groceries while listening to the answering machine. If tasks weren’t done singly--mindfully--panic would push its way up from her toes, would rush around her ears until she found herself in bed in the middle of the day, defeated.

It hadn't always been this way. These everyday motions used to be completed without thinking, sometimes in combinations of two or more. All was smooth, uncomplicated dailyness. Sure there were bumps, this was no perfect existence, but those bumps were slight and the sun was consistent and disturbances like what happened last Friday came nowhere nearby.

Maybe living alone exacerbated everything. The highs were even higher when buoyed by newfound independence, but the lows were bottomless with no one to pull her out.