Cider insider her

Home to my beautiful bride
She'll not feel so rotten
As soon as she's gotten
Some Cider inside her inside!

(a chorus of 8-12 year olds all singing)

Cider inside of her
cider inside of her
Cider inside of her
cider inside her inside

So imagine, if you will, a stage full of 8 -12 year olds dressed in adorable fuzzy animal costumes waving about jugs of cider and singing this little ditty. Pretty hysterical. If only I could sing it to you the damn song would be stuck in your head as well. The few songs in Fantastic Mr. Fox really stick in your head. It's infuriating sometimes. I've been humming the cider song for about 3 days now and every now and then I bust into a song whose only words are digga digga dig! Aaahhh.

But other than having annoying songs stuck in my head this weekend went very well. I was totally impressed with the professionalism of the kids, and though I did have to be the silence police, they were great. All three performances were sold out and a talent agent came to their Sunday performance. She told Tom and Jenna (the owners and operators of the theatre and the drama academy) that these were the most professional children she'd seen. Isn't that great? Now when she needs to cast kids she'll think of the Theatre academy. What a wonderful boost for the academy. I hope I can live up to such high teaching standards! hee, hee
Thank god I'm teaching the wee little ones.

On a totally different note, at my first rehearsal one thing that struck me was that there was a 10 year old playing a drunk rat. It was a short bit and the kid was hysterical, but I just kept thinking, "This would never fly in the States." Can you hear the complaints pouring in from parents if there was a little 10 year old pretending to be drunk, followed by an 11 year taking a swig from a jug of Cider and saying, "It's like liquid gold. Like drinking sunshine and rainbows." I mean it's a great line, but I could hear so many people in my hometown getting all bent out of shape over such a thing. Maybe I'm totally wrong here. Maybe no one would care. I just can't help thinking that there is a bit of a puritanical strain in American society that would see this as totally inappropriate for kids. What do you think? Seriously, I have to admit that little drunk rat was one of my favorite parts of the show. It made me laugh every single time I saw it. He wore a leather vest and leather cap with his little rat years sticking out. Adorable.

I had a really great, albeit busy, weekend getting to know some of the kids and the people I'll be working with/for. You know what? Everyone at the theatre office is British, so despite the fact that they speak English and I speak English half the time I don't have a clue what they are talking about. There are all sorts of British slang words I don't know, though I can usually get the gist, (hell I'm sure there's lots of American slang I don't know), then there are all these references to British pop culture - TV shows, music groups, famous people, and I just sit there with a blank look on my face. It shall be interesting seeing how things go for me at the theatre. I have a feeling that since I only will be working one day a week and there's already this gulf of nationality and familiarity it'll take some time to really get to know everyone. On the bright side they all seem extremely nice and very funny. They work hard and like to relax and have a good time once the work is finished. I went out for drinks with everyone a couple times this weekend to try and get to know them better. it was fun but I mainly just sat around and listened to them talk. My family would never believe how totally shy I become when I first meet people.

Well, it's a beautiful day out today. Ally deserves a nice long walk and I need to hang up some laundry. It should actually dry since it's supposed to be in the 50's (that's Fahrenheit) so my laundry won't become clothesicles as this do on cold winter days when I have no choice but to hang the laundry outside since every spare inch of indoor is already taken up with drying clothes! Sometimes I do desperately miss my dryer. My nice BIG American dryer. Sure it probably was too big for only two people, yeah it increased out electricity bills, and of course I used it all year round even when it would have been energy-saving, environmentally friendly to hang the laundry outdoors....but it was wonderful. It removed dog hair from clothing - I love that little lint trap- I could do as much laundry as I wanted in one day with no problems. sigh...those were the days. don't get me wrong we could buy a dryer here, but it would be small and one like our neighbors so I'd probably end up burning holes in more laundry thus destroying mass quantities of clothing, sheets, and towels. So, the line outside it is. I better get going before the weather turns on me. I just know I'm going to hang out the laundry and dark, grey clouds will roll in dropping buckets of rain all over my nice, clean laundry. All because i didn't get it done earlier.

Later gator!

Holey laundry, Batman!

Aaaaah, the excitement of using foreign appliances never get dulled. After our visitors left on Thursday I decided to take advantage of my neighbors kind offer to use her dryer whilst she and her beau were away. What bliss I thought to have dry laundry without stringing it up all over the apartment! I can do loads and loads of laundry and it won't take 3 days for it to dry. Heaven. All I had to do was haul my wet laundry upstairs and figure out that pesky foreign dryer. It took a bit of button pressing and nob turning but I finally figures out how to get it working. It's one of those that doesn't have a vent, it has a water collection tank that you have to empty. Don't worry I emptied it before I started my laundry. I was good to go.
My first load turned out fine. It wasn't completely dry, but I was anxious to put in my next load, our comforter, and wasn't worried about a couple towels still being mildly damp. "But," I thought, "I don't want my comforter to be wet we need it for tonight..." So, I cranked up the timer to...well, I don't really know how long I set it for, and decided I'd come back up periodically and check how it was doing. Oops! big mistake. Naturally, I forgot about checking it and...oh say nearly an hour later I remember my comforter was in the dryer, I'd better go see if it was dry yet.
I bounded up the stairs put the key in the lock and began turning it when I thought, "ugh, what's that smell?" There was this acrid, burning, semi-sweet smell hanging in the air. Oh god, the laundry!!! Oh yes, it was my comforter. I punched the button to stop the machine, whipped open the door and was hit by the powerful stench of burned comforter. Oh it was burned alright, I don't mean a little melted, I mean great brown patches of burnt comforter. I beheld the mess and nearly wept.
Ok, I didn't really weep and it wasn't really that messy. The comforter, yes, was a disaster (an extra crispy disaster at that) but the machine was A-OK...if you don't count the offending odor, which now filled the ENTIRE apartment. I delicately pulled out the comforter and surveyed the damage. Shit. It was bad. Completely un-salvageable. Thank god it was mine and not my neighbors - I'd washed and dried a blanket we had borrowed from her in the first load.
Honestly, I didn't even know that dryers could do that! I must sound like a complete idiot but I have never, EVER, in my life put something in the dryer and had it come out well-done. (on a tangent...extra crispy, well-done...could I put in any more food references? How is it that even when I'm not talking about food I am talking about food? Does anyone else see this as some sort of deep-seated problem? we'll ponder that later)

I ran downstairs with stinky blanket in tow and barged into my own apartment, brandishing my failure to my DH. Who innocently looked up from the couch and said, "What happened?"
"I destroyed our blanket!" I screeched, "and their apartment stinks to high heaven. What are we going to do? I feel awful."

Luckily, my DH kept his head about him and said, "I'll come up and look." What he really meant was smell and whoa, it hit him the minute he opened the door. we proceeded to go around their apartment opening every door and window we could find. The air will clear it out, my DH was positive.

As we sat down to dinner late that night I heard someone moving around upstairs. Oh shiezboch (a new word CD created) they couldn't be home already. They're not due back until tomorrow! Ah ha, it's Marie and Michel, the dog sitters. Oh great, how am I going to explain this in French. My DH said, "Just don't go up there. You don't have to tell them anything." But I really felt like I should explain. So, I dutifully trudged up the stairs and told Marie, in my best French that I had burned, brûlé, my blanket. I think she told me, "It happens" and I know that she asked me if I had put it on delicate - which I had not. Oops, again. Marie was satisfied because she could now tell her husband, Michel, that she had not left on the outside light, as he had chastised her for when they had arrived. A happy ending for Marie. Not so much for me. Well, we kept the windows open till about 11:30 p.m. (the discovery of the burning had occured about 3:30 p.m. or so) and the apartment still smelled. Yes, it was better - 8 hours with the fresh, cold air blowing through I would hope it smelled better - but there were still distinct traces of funk in the air. Sadly, that funk was still there the next morning when our neighbors arrived home. I am so thankful that they were very laid back about the whole thing. They even said I could use the dryer again, they left almost immediately for a ski week. I guess as long as we watch Picasso, the snaggle-toothed slobber hound they're OK with us stinking up their apartment with the stank of singed synthetic fibers! All's well that ends well, I guess. Though I'm not sure I'll be using their dryer again. Then again, you never know....

Yep, that's an actual hole. I seriously burned a hole, TWO in fact, in my comforter. Who would have thought little old me not being able to use a French dryer! Hey, in my defense, instructions were not included....