Well, the weather hasn't co operated that much this winter. This winter has been almost as good as the summer was, which is my way of saying that it has been one of the worst I can remember! Terrible! Where is the ice? Where is the snow? I've pulled my shovel out once so far this winter. Once! And it was a pity pull. There was only about an inch of snow, it would have melted by the following afternoon but my shovel was starting to look lonely and forlorn in the back of my shed behind the bikes so I thought I would get it out, let it see the sunlight and the sky, remember its rightful place in the universe.
I love my shovel. I love shoveling. Every winter Kurtis and I fight over who gets to do the shoveling at our house. I love shoveling so much that I will put a twenty five pound baby on my back in our baby trekker and shovel the driveway, just to make sure that I get the job done before Kurtis gets home because otherwise I know I will have to share.
But this year there has been no snow to shovel and very little ice. However, the kids did get about a week to take advantage of the work Kurtis did in the back yard this year.
The rink took several weeks to perfect, the kids loved for about a week and a half and now it sits, runny and bumpy and soft as an August slushy in some places, waiting for the next big freeze.
I had my first rehearsal of the year on Sunday. It felt good to sing a little, to talk about gigs, potential and booked, to think about music and new directions to take, and costumes and characters and muppets. Yep, muppets.
Somehow it came up that most of the band had never seen the Jim Henson Memorial and, despite the fact that it took place almost twenty years ago, there's a video of it on You Tube, like many other wonderful videos that don't involve gratuitous cat injuries, terrible acoustic versions of Coldplay songs or stupid human tricks...oh wait...I'm in one of those.
So we watched it. and we were all sniffling by the end. It's amazing how much of the sound track of my childhood is contained in music made by large puppets. Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, and Fraggle Rock, all taught me songs that I can still remember the words to now. Songs that still affect me, obviously, because the tears running down my face at the end of the Memorial Medley were pretty uncontrollable.
And the real kicker? The coup de gras? At the end of the last song, all of the muppets come out to sing and the five year old boy who was watching it with us kept naming the ones that he recognized.
"I see Fozzie and Gonzo!"
"Look, I see Oscar and Prairie Dawn and Elmo!
"There's Telly!"
And at the end, as the camera pulled back on all the singing muppets, he said
"But where's Kermit?"
And he reduced a room full of adults to full on sobs. Yeah, you don't know how much effort it cost me not to blurt out
"Kermit's dead, kid! Kermit's dead!"
I would recommend watching the entire memorial medley sometime. It's on you tube in two parts and in total it's about fifteen minutes long but it is so worth it.
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