To do

My to do lists is out of control, but it's fun. It really is.

• Less than forty-eight hours until I step up to the microphone to introduce the first reader in the LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER Spokane show. We had an amazing full-run-through rehearsal on Tuesday night in a chapel with a huge cross over our heads. Which made it interesting when we were laughing until we cried over someone's bloodied nursing nipples. Aside from the fact that we tried to dehydrate our entire cast permanently - it was so freaking hot in there - it was perfection.

((If you are in Spokane, please come to the show on Sunday. We would absolutely love to see you there. Or maybe you are in the Chicago area? Catch their show tomorrow.  Madison is also running on Sunday at 3:00 p.m.))

• Matt's mom flew in on Tuesday morning and my mom arrived late Wednesday night. The kids are vibrating with excitement. They haven't stopped talking for three days, except for Garrett, who stopped talking briefly twice this morning to vomit everywhere. So, I'll be spending the next forty-eight hours cringing at every stomach twinge and surge of nervous butterflies, expecting to be laid low by child-stomach-crud-from-hell just in time to have to crawl, green-faced and miserable through this AWESOME show that we have worked so hard on for months. Damn children to hell in a hand-basket with the lid firmly latched and all their stupid puking germs inside it with them.  Yet more sickies aside, running millions of errands is laughably easy with grandmas in the car. I can just leave the difficult, slow, snotty, shoes-always-untied children in the car and run in. Unheard of. Heaven.

• In the midst of the chaos and fun and crazy, unbelievable sadness. We lost a dear friend suddenly on Sunday. Matt flies to Denver for the day on Saturday to attend the service celebrating his incredible life. You probably noticed a slight something on Sunday night and turned on a light or just looked up for a moment, wondering, because the world became a little bit darker the moment his light slipped out of it. If all goes according to plan and airplanes fly when they say they will, Matt will be back on Sunday morning, just in time to have all of the children thrown at him so that my mom and my mother-in-law can come to the show.

• Sometime last week, before the advent of the to do list from hell, I took the kids to the circus by myself and attended Kindergarten Mother's Day tea. I have posts written on both experiences, but they will just have to wait for my return to post-production stress levels.

• The programs are proofed and printed. (And every single person in my life has been duly warned to take typos or errors to their grave, I do not want to know. Ever.) Flowers bought. Notebook with all pieces and transitions ready for the podium. Will call list printed. We're ready. These women are amazing and we are so ready.

• I went shopping. I know. I bought an outfit and cute funky shoes. In case you don't remember, I am not a shopper. I haven't bought cute, funky shoes since, maybe 2001. And then I bought lipstick at a real, honest-to-god make up counter in Nordstroms, which almost didn't happen because OH! THE HORROR! My face in those torture devices the make-up mavens call "mirrors!" WTF? What is up with that? How do you make-up buying women deal with seeing your face in that awful mirror on a regular basis? Why would I ever need to see my face so ... horrifically magnified? Or the craters around my mouth and in the corners of my eyes? Or the pores on my cheeks. Or the hairs? My god, the hairs. Shudder. I am still recovering and I have no idea if I actually like the lipstick that the kind make-up lady picked out for me because I could not get that evil mirror away from my face fast enough.

• When you watch the video (you will watch the video, won't you?) of the Spokane show, you will have to look for my fancy outfit and funky shoes and out-of-my-comfort-zone lipstick and then you will tell me that you loved it and take all criticism to your grave because wouldn't you feel guilty if I curled up into a little ball and died?

• I'm kidding. Of course. You will watch the video to hear the gorgeous words - and you won't even notice me because you will be riveted by the women in our cast and their stories. And that is typed with absolutely no kidding or sarcasm or dissembling of any kind. They. are. astonishing.

Happy, happy Mother's Day, my lovelies. Send up a little thought for us and our excitement and our nerves and our hearts and souls and our funky shoes and our (hopefully, please, universe, please) happy stomachs on Sunday at 3:00 p.m. PST.