Focus Grasshopper

Multi-tasking has long been essential to my health and happiness. I am most comfortable when simultaneously engaging in three to five different and completely unrelated tasks.

To stop is to invite an uneasy restlessness leading to who knows what? Chocolate binging? Unnecessary clothing purchases? Fruitless pacing?

But, it has been essential that I stop multi-tasking while directing Tea-A-Ria.

Hold on a sec, I've got to finish this Dove bar...

Now where was I? Oh yes...I was talking about putting the breaks on my multi-tasking. 

It's not as if there aren't a lot of tasks to be done currently. As a matter of fact, the tasks involved in putting together a theater production clearly mimic multi-tasking. Yet as they're all geared towards achieving the same goal, you can't, in all fairness, call the process multi-tasking.

Only semantics, you say? 

Just a moment while I cut the tags from my new capris...

Be that as it may, those of us who live our lives as a web completely understand what I'm talking about. It's almost unnatural to engage in only one project.

But I knew from the get go that this is what I must do - especially as this is my directing debut. And now, we're three weeks out from our opening night! It would be madness to even consider a project not related to Tea-A-Ria.

I'm actually loving this directing thing and so don't miss the multi-tasking as much as I had feared, but I wonder...why on earth do my feet hurt so much.

Zumba's Got Me

I've made a discovery that's rocked my world and kicked my bootie - Zumba.

I know! I'm the one who cannot commit to an exercise class. I'm the one who still cannot do the electric slide.

But I loved my first Zumba class at our Bay Oaks Community Center. Described to me as a mixture of hip hop, Latino and belly dance, it's wildly dynamic.

I was so into it that I didn't even care I was moving forward and left while everyone else was moving backward and right!

But it did do me in. I had planned to catch up with GiGi afterward, a reporter from our local Sand Paper who had recently written an article about me.

When the class began at 6:30, I was certain I was going home to shower and then meet up with Gigi at our newest beach eatery and drinkery, Nervous Nellies.

However, while the shower did go far in making me less sweaty and infinitely more presentable, it also dissolved me into a whiny girl who could not find her way off the couch.

Oooohhh...my back! Grhhhhh...my abs! Ouch...my thighs!

I can't wait til next week!

The picture above are not two women laughing at me. It's myself and my Miss Suzanne of Corpus Christi during her last trip here in February. She'll soon be here again in just a few weeks and trust me, we'll be Zumba-ing. Although, likely neither of us will be laughing so heartily afterward! 

Well wait, that probably not true. We'll likely be laughing more.

Kenny Uncaged

"And now, your winner - at one minute and 52 seconds into the second round - by rare naked choke - KEN-NY NIEN-HAUS....!"

And the crowd went WILD!

And the champ's mother continued to shake for another 45 minutes. I do believe this was more intense than giving birth to the kid!


But Lordy! It was the most thrilling four minutes and 52 seconds of our lives! We can't stop smiling whenever we talk about it.

And what's next? As of yesterday another fight is already in the works. May 8th is being tossed about as a possibility even as I write.

There will soon be a video of it all on YouTube. Do you think you can watch?

I understand some simply can't. But to those folks I'd like to mention this: If I, as Kenny's mother and one of the biggest cry babies on the planet can sit cage side without having a heart attack or a complete meltdown, I think you can handle it. Although...you do hear me screaming like a banshee in the video. 

At one point Kenny threw himself into the air and wrapped his legs around his opponent's waist - while they both were standing! It was CRAZY!

The picture above is one frame from the video I attempted. It's pixel-y and blurry, I know, so here is one from after the fight.

 
That's my boy! 

I believe it'll soon be time to give Kenny a nickname. I'm thinking "The Brick Haus". What do you think?

The Time Is Here

Can even the most hardened of mothers withstand the constant onslaught of comments such as:

"You know those cage fights are way different in real life than they are on TV."

"If you're his mom, you don't belong there."

"I don't get how you could watch such a thing when it's your own kid!"

Several acquaintances of mine actually looked at me with such horror you'd have thought the kid was five and I'd just pushed him into the waiting fist of the school yard bully.

Well let me tell you this. This gentle tea-totin history lover can watch her son in his first cage fight. As a matter of fact I'm so excited I can hardly stand it. Good thing too, since our departure to St. Louis is imminent.

How could I not be excited - and proud - when Kenny has worked so hard. He's already shown us he has the heart and discipline of a champion.

Of course, I do get that as the doors open tomorrow at 2:30 I will likely be a train wreck. I may even need to cling to Donna Failoni, Alex Nienhaus, or Cindi Schmitt - the only women on both sides of the family who feel they can watch.

Although I could cling to just about anyone since Al Hrabosky's is sold out with standing room only! 

So I beg you, wrap us all in calm and send both of those boys - my Kenny and his opponent - your prayers. Wrap them both in white light. To help you keep them in your mind's eye let me tell you this: both weigh 140.

But Kenny is the one standing.

The Perils of Rabbit-esque

Last week I was without stray thoughts. 

And, as I had firmly declined a request to don rabbit ears for the Alice in Wonderland tea I spoke at on Thursday, I hunkered down one afternoon to create a freakishly over sized watch face. Even the rabbit-esque require the proper accessories you know.

I love the top hat and am quite partial to the lace topped white socks as well. In fact, I'm rather attached to the whole thing. But, I quickly learned the perils of dressing even remotely rabbit like.

I was in Tampa the day before my talk and my hostess and I were were standing side by side in front of the J. Crew window at the International Mall. Each of us stood quietly as we studied the perfectly poised mannequin sporting this spring's latest style - a style I couldn't help thinking was somewhat too eclectic. 

"I don't know," I said. "There's an awful lot going on there."

My hostess waited a moment before turning to me.

"Fashion commentary from the woman who'll be dressed like a white rabbit tomorrow?" 

I've never claimed to be a true fashionista but I do believe I've now lost what little fashion credibility I might have possessed.

I also learned that night I've long been buying jeans a size too big! 

I may as well have consented to wearing the ears!