The New Kid

Last week brought a Variety Show held at my local high school. It was enormous fun; I had no idea some of these kids could do what they did.



I felt strange, though.



In the middle of the fourth grade, I started home-schooling; and so I haven't really been able to grow up with my elementary school classmates - not in the way they grew up with each other. So when I was there in the audience, watching and listening to everyone greeting each other with intense hugs and little shrieks and big smiles, I felt like The New Kid: only in this instance, I knew everyone but nobody knew me.

I got the chance to catch up with a few kids, though. I ended up have a wonderful time.

Sometimes I wish I were part of the high school.

~Emily

A Little Hole Opens Up In Me (And Other Things)

I have twenty Followers on Twitter. It's funny, I joined Twitter because Neil Gaiman talked (and talked) about Twitter and obviously really liked it; and so I figured, Okay. Something's got to be kind of cool about this Twitter thing. Whatever it is.

And I think it's just so much fun, and actually is very cool.

I am EmilyLady on the site, if thou art by some chance interested.

I picked up a copy of Laurie Halse Anderson's new book today - "Wintergirls"! I told myself I would wait until I found it at the library to read it, but I knew I would be upset and missing it if I didn't take it home with me from Barnes and Noble. And so I did. I had to.

Sometimes that just happens when I start a book - I put it back on the shelf and walk through the door, to the car waiting outside ... and a little hole opens up in me.

What else is there to say? ...

Well. Not much. I just felt a twinge of guilt for neglecting the blog for a few days; for some reason I feel lately that I have to update a lot more often than I once did.

Not that I don't enjoy it. And thanks so much to everyone (particularly the Fiends) for commenting. It's such a treat.

~Emily

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

"Chitty Chitty Bang Bang." My first play.

And it was PHENOMENAL, I tell you. It was truly, outrageously, tremendously, enormously phenomenal. Now, I know you must have been to a play before - and you know how the dancing can be hypnotic and fascinating and lovely? That was "Chitty Chitty." And you know how you want to laugh so hard even though nothing's really terribly funny, everything is just so wonderful and you're having one of the most marvelous nights of your life?

That was pretty much how it went down. And there's a lesson in this, too: if ever you are going to collect money for charity at a theatre, have the cast members stand around collecting it after the show. It works. People donate. I got to meet the child stars, Aly Brier and Jeremy Lipton.

I can't thank Miss Juliette and her parents enough. They let me have one of the most splendid evenings of my life.

~Emily

Off to Chitty Chitty

Tonight is a friend's birthday present. Ah, now THERE is a sentence that makes no sense: but it's a play. She was allowed to take one friend, and she chose me, and so we are going to see "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" together. Sounds like a lot of fun.

I love theatre with deeply, almost as much as I love books. I have performed in two plays - one a production of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", the other a bunch of Hans Christian Andersen tales - but never seen one. So this is my first, and I am so excited!

I must give an enormous thanks to Juliette and her mother for inviting me. And happy birthday, Juliette!

OH, I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M REALLY GOING TO SEE A PLAY!

~Emily

Something to See

Look how GREEN my blog is! And I am green today too. Happy St. Patrick's Day.

~Emily

For Rhode Islanders

http://www.adoptionri.org/photolisting.html

An Environmentally-Savvy Youngster

Not terribly long ago, I posted about how William, upon recognizing he had left the water running in the sink for an extra couple of seconds, lamented that he had "killed polar bears."

This is a very environmentally-savvy youngster.

Yesterday he was pulling a paper towel off the rack, and the roll was stripped bare.

"Oh no!" he cried. "I used the last one! The world is going to end."

I didn't get it at first. I thought he was just being silly. So I said, "Boom." (The world has ended, exploded.)

"No, no, no," he explained. "It's not going to explode, it's going to get warm."

This is the same seven-year-old who gritted his teeth when I told him I might need surgery on my toe (didn't in the end) and said, "Oh, I don't know, surgery is expensive."

I can't decide whether this is a good thing ... or a not-so-good thing.

~Emily