Thursday, November 13 - Friday, November 14

Thursday was Greta's final tech week rehearsal. It's definitely a grueling week, not getting home until 8:30pm and then having to do homework. 

Friday I worked from home. It was a chaotic day here, with the retaining wall construction in full swing. There are mountains not only of dirt but also of gravel in our backyard; the entire lawn is torn up from the construction vehicles; and I was asked to move the Volvo this morning to a different spot on the street because they needed to dump yet another pile of dirt at the curb. Is it dirt? Or powdered cement? Who knows. But all day, the house was literally shaking--physically shaking--as enormous construction vehicles rumbled up and down the driveway, each time delivering one powerful block of wall to the backyard. I don't know how they are maneuvering these blocks over the cliff of our backyard into the form of a wall. That will remain a construction-world mystery. But the wall is supposed to be done early next week. Then we will have a Retaining Wall for the Ages and also an absolutely ravaged yard that will now require another year's college tuition to fix. 

Friday night was Opening Night of the Middle School musical--Little Mermaid. And it was, as always, just wonderful. Greta is a seagull and Carlotta the maid. She has solo lines in the gulls' song, "Human Stuff," and several lines as Carlotta. In the show-stopper song, "Under the Sea," the entire cast came out in various sea-creature costumes--just adorable and hilarious. Greta was a clam. It's always amazing what the director can get these kids to do, especially since some of the sixth-graders are as young as 11.

And, a victory: Andrew managed to get home from Germany in time for the show. His flight landed at 3pm. By the time he got his baggage he didn't get home till 4:45. We had to be at school at 6:15. He literally walked into the door as I was trying to simultaneously pick Lucia up from XC / make an early dinner / get Greta's hair and makeup done / get dressed / find the pets and deal with them / get Greta to school for call time, so I welcomed him home by saying I STARTED MAKING SHEET-PAN QUESADILLAS AND YOU NEED TO FINISH THEM and whisked Greta out the door. (If he had any urge to say, "I've had such a long day of traveling and am so tired and jetlagged!" he wisely kept those thoughts to himself as he took up the knife and began carving pieces of the rotisserie chicken for the quesadillas.)

One show down, two to go.