Fisher Price Dollhouse

I'm sitting at the computer of our hostess for the week, a wonderful woman with three grandchildren in the show. She has made our week such a delight housing-wise. She even made homemade hot fudge for sundaes. Mmmmm boy! Next to me is an assortment of toys that take me back to my childhood, some of which I believe my grandmother had. There's the Fisher-Price Play Family House (a near identical replica of my own home), the Fisher-Price Family Play Farm (which also looks hauntingly familiar), and the Fisher-Price Parking Ramp Service Center (the elevator with the bell being the best part). There's also a one of those strange egg man pull-around toys that has the spinning arms, I'm sure my siblings would know what I'm talking about if they saw it. These are the toys that every grandma should have.

We're in Lambert this week, possibly the smallest town yet on our Small Towns of the West tour. Lambert has a bar, a church, a school, a post office, but no groceries. That seems inconsequential for our hostess who fixed us homegrown roast beef, tomatoes, potatoes, and squash the other day. One of my romantic notions of the rural West is eating what the land provides, especially meat. I was very satisfied to fulfill that romantic ideal. I don't think we'll be leaving small towns until we hit Twin Falls in a few weeks, but in two weeks we'll be in Sundance, WY which should be a nice change of scenery for us. It's just on the Western edge of the Black Hills, right near Devil's Tower.

It's Saturday today, a day off for Mallory and me due to this week's Friday show. The week went pretty well and the kids ended up doing a good job last night. We originally had 42 audition but ended up having 5 drop out, 4 due to academic ineligibility and 1 due to a death in the family. Unfortunately, 4 of them happened to be in the same age range leaving us with only 3 beggars (normally 10) and without a second towncrier. I ended up playing Towncrier #2 and we made things work despite our low beggar numbers as we prepared for our performance. And then, as if three was too many, one of our beggars didn't show up Friday night because she wasn't feeling up for it. Mallory and the beggars quickly figured out a new plan of attack to cover the missing lines and her role in the set changes and they ended up doing a great job.

Meanwhile, I crammed my 6'4" frame into a towncrier costume and had fun playing a role normally reserved for a twelve year old. You should have seen me in that costume. There was about a foot-long gap between the vest and pants, the jacket sleeves were about three-quarters length, and if the pants were any tighter, it would have been obscene. Thankfully they weren't and the only obscenity I had to worry about was the girl lifting her skirt and flashing the other children backstage. Very un-ladylike behavior for one of our Ladies.

Today we're going to head to Williston, ND to see if we can find something interesting, like a bookshop. It's not our next residency, but it's probably the largest town within an hour's drive. We're onto Circle next week, about 60 miles down the road. That will definitely be our shortest drive of the Fall tour.