More Shakespeare

I should be spreading bark mulch right now, since the temperature/humidity combo isn't severely disgusting at the moment (when I mowed the lawn Monday the air was so heavy you could swim in it). But every time I walk out there to look at it I get distracted by the mole runs. MOLE RUNS! Hey, cats, why don't you get out there and earn your living? Also, hey, moles, why don't you eat the roots off of the weeds in the flower bed instead of ruining the nice plants?

Anyway, the Shakespeare production is hurtling towards us like a runaway train. Annabeth was peeved that she didn't have a part that included one of the fancy costumes. So I made her a jester top. This is how far we've gotten with it:



The plan is to have elastic in the sleeves on the forearms, and to have a jagged hem. The fabric is cheap cotton made up in an interpretation of Simplicity 4860 (no clue if this is out-of-print -- I found it in our pattern stash); sash is a silk scarf we dyed with Koolaid and/or food coloring several years ago. The place putting this whole shebang on has gold pants for the kids playing clown roles, but we might end up making some ourselves -- depends on what the director thinks. Also, they had a cool jester cap, but it seemed sort of big for Annabeth, so we might be making one of those, too.

And, this being us, every time we look at it someone suggests, in a cooing tone of voice, covering it with Hundreds of Swarovski Crystals! and another person gushes, "Oh, that would be really STUNNING!" Which makes sense if 1) you're in Irish Dance, and 2) you enjoy making fun of ads for solo dresses.

I was running through scenes with Thalia last night, and she doesn't have her lines totally memorized yet. And I got sort of panicked because YOOHOO, only THREE MORE DAYS OF REHEARSAL! Anyway, this morning in the car on the way to the rehearsal she was working on the lines (total digression: We have to drive on the highway to get to this place, and I usually don't drive on the highway at 8:30a.m.-ish, so I didn't know that apparently Wednesdays are Let's Get In the Car and Drive day, featuring thousands of cars on the highway. However, when the traffic is going 15mph on the Interstate instead of the usual 65mph you have time to notice the sunflower growing by the guard rail and wonder how that happened -- a bird? Someone threw seeds out their car window?). She absolutely could not remember the line "She pines in thought," so I said, "She Pines In Thought -- SPIT!" (because one way to memorize lines is to quiz yourself on the 1st letter of every word, except probably this should be SPITH! instead of SPIT!) which reminded me of the time we were driving a friend home from dance and discussing the Black Eyed Peas, and the friend was saying that she had one of their albums where they say a "bad word" but when they get to that spot she just sings, "Spit!", which I have to admit I thought was a sort of pointless substitution, all things considered. So now whenever I think of saying "Spit!" emphatically I think of her sitting in the backseat virtuously yelling "SPIT!" Except by the time I got done with telling Thalia all of this she was commenting, "Oh, great, now whenever I say this line I'm going to start laughing."

On the other hand, I don't think she'll forget the line.