I have no patience for people who tell pet stories. It strikes me as wasteful to spend that much time and emotion on an animal when there are children starving in the world.

Clearly, I'm an idiot, and God is teaching me something. Yes, I should care about the children who are starving, but there is a reason that he put animals in our lives.

As I've mentioned, I have a fur-baby (a very, very furry fur baby) who is wasting away in front of me. The unofficial diagnosis is FIP (Feline infectious peritonitis) but there is no test for the actual infection. There is also no cure. The vet told me on Tuesday that there is nothing she can do for him.

There is some awful irony here. I have another cat, Hoot, who was once half of a matched set--Hoot 'n' Anny. His sister Anny went to her reward in August of 2004, almost 10 years after a vet in Nashville removed a lot of her FIP-ravaged girl parts when she was spayed. I remember the doctor offering to diagnose her (for a ridiculous amount of money) and then telling me that there was nothing he could do to save her once he diagnosed her. I told him how ridiculous that sounded to me, and he sent her home. She never was a fat, thriving cat, but she seemed happy for the rest of her life.

I was about to talk about the irony of that. I never knew FIP was contagious. Smudge probably got it from Anny and it has been dormant in him all this time.

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This is the part I actually told Gordo about, in a shorter version:

As I said, I also replaced the drama teacher, who moved to Chicago because someone is making a movie from one of his screenplays. He's that good--he has an MFA in Theatre, and the boys love him. For the last 7 years, he managed (among other things) to put up a good musical every spring at an all-boys school that never even had a theatre program before he came. That's saying something. (It also helps that he had a brand-new, 8-million-dollar theater.)

When I was first asked to take over his classes, the thought of pulling a musical together in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar students in a matter of about 12 weeks was terrifying, especially since I was doing another musical at college the first 6 of those weeks. So the previous teacher recommended I do a talent show. The school has wanted to have one for years, but no one had time to put it together. I wouldn't have to worry about securing rights, building a set, hiring choreographers, auditioning and dealing with girls on campus, etc. Besides, I've worked with students on individual pieces for years, primarily for auditions. I knew I could do this.

So I announced it to all my classes for several weeks. I had my drama kids think about monologues, scenes, or musical numbers they liked. I pushed my band kids to find pieces. I struck a deal with my drummers--if they would do a piece, I would get them out of other rehearsals...

I told part of this story to Gordo, and he said I should post it. I'd rather blog it.

As you may or may not know, I was hired in December to fill in as band director at a military school (all boys, 7-12th grade) for a teacher who was deployed for 90 days and for a drama teacher who moved away. I expected the job to be challenging, but it was even more challenging than I expected. Even so, I feet like it is where I need to be.

These boys can be really tough. Some of them don't ever remember living in a two-parent home, some of them have been shuffled between parents who don't know what to do with them or kicked out of schools that don't know what to do with them. There are a handful of day cadets, and a good many whose parents live in the Atlanta area, but many of the boys don't go home very often. When you combine this with immaturity and raging hormones, it can make life difficult for students and teachers alike.

About a month ago, I got an email from the local Arts Council announcing that a group called the Dallas Brass was coming to town. As part of their program, they invite local high school students to participate in a clinic and play a piece with them. Our band program has been in a downward spiral for a while, but I have a handful of good players, and out of them I picked the ones whose behavior would reflect positively on the school. Initially I met some resistance from my higher-ups, because the performance was scheduled the...

I just closed my 30th show Sunday night, KISS ME, KATE. Certainly every one that I've done has been unique, full of special people who have stuck with me for a long time. I have notebooks and scrapbooks and pictures on my piano, music and programs and cards.

But this one was truly special to me, and has been from the get-go. Last summer I went to see the chair of the music department about scheduling my summer classes, and he asked me if I would be interested in being the musical director for the next musical. I literally squealed in his office. (Yes...very professional of me.) I met with the chair of the theatre department soon after and couldn't figure out why they wanted little ol' me. I figured they were pretty hard up.

Honestly, I've been giddy about the whole thing ever since. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop--divas, cranky techies, bipolar directors--but it never happened. Instead I had a cast who wanted to work their tails off and a production staff who wanted to take good care of me.

This was easily the most pleasant, positive experience I've had in musical theatre in a long, long list of pleasant experiences. Now we're talking about doing "The Fantasticks," which is my all-time favorite show. (It was also the hardest show I had ever done before "Kate.")

I'm a lucky, lucky girl...

OL's comment made reminded me that a plot synopsis might come in handy. Kiss Me, Kate is a...

I wasn't planning to be here right now. For that matter, I stopped making plans ten years ago, because my plans never really pan out, and the things that pan out instead are always so much better than what I would have planned, anyway.

New Year's Eve is a horrible holiday for someone like me. That's a blog in itself, but I'm not gonna get into detail about it right now. For the last several years, I've gone out of town to family or friend's houses. This year I was simply too busy to put much thought into it.

Fortunately, I kept getting messages from a SoWal friend asking if I was going to come down. Barely a week ago, I made plans to be here.

I can't remember when I've ever felt so certain that I was in the absolute right place. I can't even begin to keep up with the party pace of this crowd, but I still know I'm supposed to be here. Today I was driving from Santa Rosa to Watersound thinking about my history with SoWal.

When I was in college, my favorite professor came to Destin with her husband about once a month. From her stories, I felt like I knew and loved Walton County already. It wasn't until a few years after college that I started coming. For 10 years, I came to Gulf Trace with a large group of people who worked with me in Young Life. I spent 5 days every Memorial Day weekend with a stack of novels and my toes in the sand. I'm hardly an introvert, but all weekend I had people asking me if I was okay--for...