Tech week, Pop-A-Lock, and Restaurant Etiquette

I've spent my weekend at the theater. Yeah, sure, so I went home to sleep and stuff, so I'm not as devoted as, say, Anita, but we've been there a good bit. What's driving me crazy, though, is balancing being a responsible parent and being a devoted cast member. If I had my way, I would stay at the theater till midnight every night, working on the set, altering costumes, making props, etc. That's what Husband and I always did. During the last week or so before opening, we just sort of lived at the theater, surviving on fast food, Pop Tarts, vending machine fare, and the occasional beer. Oh, and coffee. Lots of coffee. And during Moon Over Buffalo, when Sam was only four months old and would go to sleep anywhere, we did the same thing. That poor baby would go to the theater with me (this was at Foothills Playhouse, last spring) at around ten o'clock in the morning, and we wouldn't get home until after midnight most nights. He took naps in the green room (which is red there, bizarrely enough) on a blanket, and rolled around on the stage while I built the set around him. I put him on a blanket in the costume shop, right outside the prop closet, in the dressing rooms...wherever I was working. This kid spent more time on the stage in that month and a half than most theater majors do their entire college careers. Most nights, during rehearsal anyway, his grandparents or aunt and uncle would keep him, then we would pick him up after rehearsal (usually around 9:30, and usually asleep) and take him back to the theater to sleep in the dressing room while we worked on the set, costumes, props, or brainstormed about scenework. A couple of nights, however, our various family members had the audacity to, you know, have LIVES, so Sam stayed for rehearsal. Husband was directing the show. I was in nearly every scene. So what to do with the baby? Carry him in the Snugli! What else? Now that is devotion to your craft. Husband and I worked our butts off for that show, and the final product reflected that hard work. It was an astonishingly good show, and I think that even if I hadn't had a hand in every aspect of it, I would still feel that way. As anyone who knows me will tell you, I'm the most critical of my own work. But that show was incredible. I was so proud of it.
Now, however, Sam won't just fall asleep anywhere he gets sleepy. If there is stuff going on, he wants to know about it, and be a part of it. And he won't just stay on the blanket when you put him there. Now he can get into trouble. Now, if I left him on a blanket in the middle of the scene shop, I'm fairly certain he would figure out how to use the table saw and build me a bookshelf. And I just don't have room in my house for any more furniture. Also, he refuses to wear safety goggles.
I digress...
My point to all this, though, is that I feel like I'm slacking off in my duties as a cast member. I should be staying later, coming earlier, working harder. But Sam needs to get home to go to bed. He needs to eat at regular times. Sure, he has a really late bedtime (it's not because he's not a good sleeper, but because we don't go to bed early, either, and he's on the same schedule we are) but I'm trying to keep it as consistent as possible. That prevents me from staying at the theater till the wee hours, or staining the stage (nothing to do with bedtimes, everything to do with keeping him away from paint fumes). This week, I've felt like a slacker mom and a slacker actor, giving neither activity my full attention. It's like when I did a show in high school, and my grades would slip during tech week. (For my non-theater-oriented friends, tech week refers to the week before the show opens, during which you add lights, costumes, sound, set, props, etc....simply put, it's a week notorious for having late nights, frustrated actors, and a psychotic-for-lack-of-sleep director. Oh, and cranky techies. [Techies are the people who do everything but perform: lighting and sound design, running the light and sound systems, building sets, moving sets, painting sets, making costumes, altering costumes, repairing costumes...ok, the list is endless, and, for the most part, thankless. Some of the best techies I've ever known are also excellent actors, and the BEST stage manager I've ever had in a show was fifteen years old. She's now a freshman at Winthrop, and aspiring to be a drama teacher. She will also be amazing at that, I'm sure. Anyway, techies deserve our respect. They deserve our thanks. And, frequently, they go without both those things. Having been a crew member before, I'm well aware of how little the tech crew gets recognized and appreciated. That's one of the things I love about FIRE: everyone works crew. So everyone gains a healthy respect for those who make a career of it. It's not easy work. And you have to walk around looking like Johnny Cash. (Again, for my non-theater-minded friends, the technical crew wears black. Traditionally, it's so they won't be too obvious when they're moving set pieces during the show. More importantly,it makes them look intimidating. And they don't have to do laundry as often that way. If you know a techie, buy him or her a black t-shirt. It will be a well-appreciated gift.)]) That being said, tech week is rough. But it's also fun to see all those elements finally added into a show. It's when you see who is truly devoted to the company, and who is just there to wear a cute costume and have their name in the program. Separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. (Not me, though. As I explained earlier, I have a baby, and he gets really unpleasant when he's sleepy. I'm wheat all the way, at least in spirit.) It's when you see all the elements of a production come together to form a (hopefully) cohesive unit. It can be beautiful, exciting, and terrifying. It's the one time I feel okay letting my laundry pile reach truly ridiculous proportions and not making beds. It's a great excuse! ("Go to the gym? Sorry, can't. It's tech week." Accompanied with an apologetic shrug, this is a fabulously effective excuse for not doing things you didn't really want to do in the first place. "Help you move? Sorry, can't. It's tech week.") Anyway...
So Friday night, I was at the theater making enormous, towering Ziegfeld Follies headpieces (to call them merely "hats" would be quite an understatement)to loosely resemble wedding cakes. I'm the queen of the hot glue gun (well, princess anyway....Mimi's glue gun is bigger than mine, AND it's pink...I'm so jealous), duchess of chenille strips, and countess of glitter glue. And, perhaps, the tulle fairy. It was a blast. And there is going to be some wicked-awesome headgear on that stage once opening night rolls around. Here's a bizarre non-sequitor: today, driving to rehearsal (because that's the only place we drive anymore), I looked in the backseat, and Sam was looking through a Sandra Boynton board book. (I highly suggest you go pick up some Sandra Boynton RIGHT NOW. She's a big hit around our house.) I'm not quite sure how he knows to do this, but he always, always turns the book right-side-up. He has never, in the past two or three months, looked through a book while holding it upside-down. Well, he was looking at the book, pointing at the monsters' noses and eyes (both big deals right now for Sam) and I mentioned to Husband that he was turning the pages back to front, not front to back. "Well," I remarked, "that's how I read magazines, so I guess it's not a big deal." It's important, at this juncture of the anecdote, to know that Husband is not from around here, so I frequently misunderstand him. He's a foreigner, you know...from Philadelphia. So when he answered me, "Yeah, that's how Merlin has to read books," I thought he said something about an umbrella. I, being understandably confused, asked him why he had mentioned an umbrella. Husband has a...quirky...sense of humor. So he said, "Oh, yeah, that's Merlin's dog. His name was Umbrella, and he had to read books backward."I paused. Then said, "Merlin would never have named a dog Umbrella. That's just ridiculous." Then Husband pointed out that it said a lot about me that I was totally willing to believe that Merlin's dog could read, and backward yet, but drew the line at him being named Umbrella. Yes, naming the dog Umbrella was where I found the story to be truly unbelievable. On the way home, four or so hours later, I argued that one might question him for believing that Merlin really existed in the first place.
But whatever. I love my Husband. I truly believe that he's the only person who has ever really understood me.
We had a fun adventure in parenting last night. Or, more appropriately, a misadventure. We went to Olive Garden for dinner. The Parents-in-law had given Husband a gift card for his birthday, and since I didn't feel like cooking last night (it was tech week!) it seemed like a perfect solution. And it was, for the most part, a very successful evening. See, I am one of those really lucky parents (get ready to hate me...a lot) whose kid is really Good In Restaurants. Plop him in a high chair, hand him a packet of saltines, and he's good to go. He waves at people passing by with trays of food. He flirts with waitresses. He plays peek-a-boo with his napkin. He holds lively conversations ("La wah da da? Ya. Da da? Ga ba da!"). He tries a variety of food off your plate, then eats his peas without complaint. Last night, he ate a breadstick, which was a really big deal, because it had butter on it. He VERY rarely gets to have butter. "Sometimes food" and all that. But it was a special occasion...you know. Tech week. But Husband and I have not been the couple who has to take turns eating while the other walks around the restaurant with a baby. We've never had to pack our food up to take home because the baby won't stop screaming. We were wary of taking him to a restaurant when we was first born, because it's one of my pet peeves to be trying to carry on a conversation while some kid is screaming and throwing food at the next table. And I just don't want to be that kind of person who ruins other peoples' dining experiences. I'm thoughtful like that. But when Sam was a week or so old, we took him out to breakfast, and he slept quite peacefully in his Graco Snug Seat. After that, we swore that if we could just play a soundtrack of plates clanking and people dropping forks, our kid would konk right out. Once he started sitting in a high chair, he really enjoyed looking around at people, and then he discovered how much fun it is to eat solid food. Now, going out to dinner is his favorite activity. Waitresses who previously swore off children forever find themselves seriously rethinking their life goals because of our little ray of sunshine. They don't know that he only smiles at them because they bring him food. They think they're something special! And that's what Sam brings to the world. He makes people feel good. Maybe now that I've gone and admitted that my child is great at restaurants, he's going to start being awful, and I fully acknowledge that should that happen, I would totally deserve it. But for the time being, he's great. A dream, through and through. The secret is to not go out when he's overdue for a nap or overly hungry. It's a pretty simple formula for keeping your baby happy all the time,actually: don't let him get too tired or too hungry, and he'll be fine.
The misadventure part of the evening, however, occurred after dinner. We were walking out to the car, full of endless breadsticks and good will toward our fellow man, and Sam got ahold of the car keys. This is a frequent occurrence. One might suggest that we get him some toy keys. Nothing doing. He knows. Just like he knows that the remote control to the DVD player we used to have isn't the REAL remote control and is therefore no substitute for the one Mommy and Daddy use. At some point between Husband unlocking the car and putting Sam in the car seat, Sam pushed the lock button on the key clicker. Neither of his parents noticed. So Husband tossed the keys in the front seat, closed Sam's door, then tried to open the driver's side door...and couldn't. Sam was in the car. So were the keys. But we weren't. Luckily, the same thing had happened to Mama N pretty recently, and she had told me about it, so I was able to call on her experience and know what to do. While Husband contemplated breaking the passenger side window to get him out, I suggested that we call Pop-A-Lock. They didn't answer, so we called the police, who, we can only assume, have a super-secret direct line to the Pop-A-Lock people, and they had Papa Lock himself at our car in the Olive Garden parking lot in twelve minutes. Granted, they were the longest twelve minutes of my LIFE, but Sam was removed from his car seat in short order, and I am forever indebted to Papa Lock. And here's a bit of good-to-know: if your baby locks himself in the car, Pop-A-Lock doesn't charge you for coming to unlock the car. Isn't that just a really nice thing to do? Papa Lock was really kind, too. Very nice. Didn't treat us like we were complete idiots at all. I was convinced they would deem me an unfit mother and take Sam away from me right then and there, but he told me that people do this kind of thing all the time, and not to worry about it. Huh. Sam was pretty furious about the whole debacle, and after five minutes of me popping up into his line of vision from behind the car door (good for the thigh muscles, by the way) he was really tired of being in the car by himself. He started screaming and crying and generally breaking my heart. It was the worst feeling in the world, to be able to see him and hear him but not be able to pick him up or comfort him. Horrible. So after we calmed him down, we went right to the store and bought him a toy. We felt REALLY bad about it...even though it was Sam's fault. Little punk.
Must get some work done now...but not too much. After all...it is tech week.