It was about 1:30 a.m. I finished writing my review of Shrek, The Musical, which we had just seen in Sacramento, and mailed it off to the newspaper, then quickly headed off to sleep, hoping I would wake up in time that I could get on the road by 9 a.m. I was hoping to get to Santa Barbara while it's still light.
No problems getting to sleep, or staying asleep and I woke up at 7 a.m., right when I wanted to. All I had to do was pack a few things, have breakfast and I would be on my way.
Then I read my e-mail.
Only one "personal" e-mail, from Char. It read "Are you ok? No Journal today??? Is it the chicken??"
Omigawd! After nearly twelve years, I hadn't posted a journal entry, not because I had no access to a computer, not because I had developed food poisoning because of that chicken the other night, but because I forgot!!!! Is this the beginning of the end? Am I really getting old and forgetful??
Well, to quickly summarize yesterday and still get on the road by 9 a.m., it was a relatively uneventful day. My plan had been to go and visit Kathy, by myself this time, since Peach was going both earlier and later in the week with her husband. I usually leave around 11 a.m. to visit her. It's about a 40 minute drive and that gets me there around lunchtime, which is when she's alert.
But then I thought about the upcoming trip to Santa Barbara and things I wanted to do before I left and decided I wouldn't go this week, but would go after I got home instead.
And then I thought of Kathy lying in that bed she seems to never leave in the semi-darkened room. I thought about telling her about Lacie's birth and I decided I would go anyway.
"Get back as soon as you can," said Walt. Our washing machine went out two days ago and either needs repair or replacement. In the meantime, he needed to get his washing to the laundromat, but needed the car to take it. (Walt has done his own washing ever since the kids were babies.)
So I got in the car and drove to Sacramento, unhappy to realize that both of my electronic gizmos had nearly dead batteries. This meant I could not listen to my audio book, and there might not be enough juice in my iTouch to even show her pictures of Lacie. I chose to power up the iTouch and gave up trying to listen to my audio book (since I can only plug one device into the cigarette lighter at a time). By the time I got the the care center, I had about 1/4 of the power in the iTouch, which was plenty to show a few pictures. And while driving I had been listening to Jack-FM, the station where Ned works, and was able to hear three of his commercial spots, 2 jingles and an announcement. It's always weird for me to listen to my son on the radio.
Kathy was awake and alert and eager to talk. She was happy to see the pictures of Lacie, and pronounced her beautiful (well that was worth the drive right there!). She chattered a lot, but again from her fantasy world (this was the first time I'd heard that she traveled to the care center in Gaddafi's airplane. When I asked her how that happened, she rolled her eyes and said "you don't even want to know.")
It seems easiest to buy into her fantasy and talk as if she is making sense. It seems to help her think that someone is actually listening to hear fears. I really want to talk to my old boss, The Psychiatrist, to find out if this is the best way to deal with someone going through what Kathy is going through.
I got home in plenty of time for Walt go to the laundromat while I took a nap (I have started taking a nap, whenever I can, on days when I know I am going to have to review a show at night). I even managed to get back to sleep again after a phone call 30 minutes into my nap.
Shrek, the Musical was lots of fun. Not as good as the movie, but a lot of fun stuff. One problem with taking a popular, well-known cartoon like Shrek and giving flesh and blood actors the job of bringing well known cartoon characters to life on the stage is that a lot of the elements get lost in the cacophony of orchestra, sound system, and characters talking together. Much of the movie’s charm came from in-jokes and visual effects and being able to snicker at the lesser characters who each brought a funny part of a familiar fairy tale to the story.
That is there in the stage show, but somehow it lacks the charm of the movie.
That said, however, the stage show delivers some really spectacular effects, particularly the Tony award-winning dragon, created by Tim Hatley, as impressive as some of the costumes from "The Lion King." The dragon swoops and flies and turns in circles on stage and above the stage and is amazingly lifelike (if there had ever been such things as fire-breathing dragons!)
It also has more fart and belch an jokes than you'll probably ever see on the stage. One song, "I think I got you beat" is almost the Shrek equivalent of Annie Get Your Gun's "Anything You can Do, I can do better," with the contest being who can fart or belch in the most spectacular, disgusting fashion possible.
This is where American theater is today, folks!!!
So that was my day. It ended with writing the review and getting it to the newspaper in time for it to be printed, I hope, today. And now it's 7:30 and I'm going to get ready to go to meet my new granddaughter! Walt can't drive down with me because he has a meeting to attend tonight.
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