Dim the lights, raise the curtain

At some place on this blog I must have stated the case for me keeping my big flapping mouth shut. Now I wish I had labored less diligently on my sentence construction, and had heeded my own advice slightly more wholly. Because, friends, I am stuck in the mud pit of my own making for sure this time.

As always, a disclaimer is in order:
I am not a personal horn-tooter. The role of making me sound better than I am falls to my loving husband, who does so heroically. My job, as I see it, is to do what needs to be done--as well as possible--and then get onto the next task. Is that so wrong?

Somehow, though, this time I sort of volunteered myself--after being asked to do so, mind you!--onto the biggest, most ulcer-producing project of my soon-to-be-extremely short life: the Stake Anniversary Pageant. Oh. Dear. Goodness. And Calgon, take me away!

Forget what you think you know about pageants--there will be no tiaras. Sashes will be kept to a bare minimum, and will be tied solely around waists. The talent portion will consists of pre-memorized lines, delivered to an audience which I pray will consist of more than theater-loving crickets. It's somewhere in the wasteland between really hopeful home-grown theatrical and heart-felt tableaux vivants. And I have landed smack in the middle of it, right up to the hair on my chinny-chin-chin. (Mostly kept unnoticeable by steady applications of Nair and tweezers.)

You see--and I am loathe to toot this particular horn--I seem to be in a directorial position here. I, the woman who has never directed more than a single roadshow. Who managed to graduate from university in a theater-related field only because she was too afraid to fail. Whose biggest stage triumph to date was as "popcorn" in the annual dance recital--and even then I forgot to put on my toe shoes!

I am so doomed.

But, the show must go on. I think. Most people assume.

Auditions start tonight.

This can only end in tears.