Eating and Watching Bernadette Peters Eat

Context: This post is about the fourth day (and third day in the city) of my third New York City trip.

Are you wondering about the title of this post?

It's pretty simple, really. On the Saturday of our trip, we ate a lot of delicious food. Older Sister had signed us up for a morning walking tour of Greenwich Village (a cute place). We grabbed breakfast at Lenny's Bagels on the way. I had a delicious bagel with cream cheese and lox, which I sadly do not have a picture of.

Lunch: After the tour, Older Sister had to rush off to an event her work was putting on, but Little Brother and I had a nice sit-down lunch. Turns out that Greenwich Village has an abundance of good Italian food, so I enjoyed tasty chicken piccata, my favorite Italian dish, at Trattoria Spaghetti. My chicken came with a piece of...what seemed to be...cornbread? But not exactly cornbread. Polenta?

Chicken piccata with potatoes and some cornbread-y stuff. There was also some garlicky spinach, not shown here. All very good!

We then grabbed gelato at a place called Grom. I had a flavor called crema di grom, which included chunks of cookies made from corn. Which also tasted like cornbread. Seriously, I'm not making this stuff up. Never have I ever had Italian food with so much corn!

Dinner: After Older Sister's work events and our matinee of Hello Dolly (more on that in a minute), we met up at Bann Restaurant, where we had a reservation. Guess what? Bann Restaurant serves Korean food! That's right. Older Sister, who has hated all "Asian food" her entire life, took us to not one but two Asian restaurants while we were visiting her! And they say people never change.

Older Sister ordered us a barbecue meal that we cooked ourselves over a tiny little grill.

Pork bun appetizer!

Rice and veggies and grilled beef, salmon, and shrimp! The meat was pre-marinated and so flavorful and good!

Older Sister grilling up some beef.

We ordered these pretty chocolate molten cakes for dessert! One for Little Brother and one for Older Sister and I to share.

What I'm trying to say is that we ate very well on Saturday.

And the Bernadette Peters part? Well, she ate very well on Saturday, too.

See, Little Brother and I had decided that our second Broadway musical for the trip would be Hello, Dolly. It featured Victor Garber (whom I knew from several made-for-TV musicals) as Horace Vandergelder, Gavin Creel (who was the original Jimmy in Thoroughly Modern Millie) as Cornelius Hackl, Charlie Stemp (a Broadway newcomer) as Barnaby Tucker, and Kate Baldwin and Molly Griggs (both of whom I know nothing about) as Irene Molloy and Minnie Fay. It also featured an actress named Melanie Moore as Ermengarde. Upon reading the playbill, I discovered that I have accidentally seen Melanie Moore in every one of her Broadway roles! She was Peter Pen in Finding Neverland and Chava in the revival of Fiddler on the Roof. I guess I'm her biggest fan or something?

But above and beyond all that, the show featured the one, the only Bernadette Peters as Dolly Levi herself! If you think you don't know who Bernadette Peters is, I promise you that you do. Find a clip of her voice on YouTube, and you'll likely recognize it. She's a mega star. Among all the other things she's done, she was a guest star in the first season of The Muppet Show and she played the voice of Sophie (the lady who sings "Paris Hold the Key to Your Heart") in the movie version of Anastasia. What a fun tie-in to the previous two days of our trip! In short, we were feeling pretty good about our choices because wouldn't seeing Bernadette Peters perform live be so fun?!

Yes, it would be! The show was great. The costuming was delightful. I thought the actors did a great job. Barnaby and Cornelius were classic Barnaby and Cornelius while Mrs. Molloy and Minnie were played as less uptight and less stupid, respectfully, than usual. Bernadette Peters and Victor Garber did a good job with their characters as well. My only real complaint was that apparently the director had asked them to be over-the-top and campy in places where it wasn't really needed. A funny line should be funny without too much of an affect.

The worst offender was a scene toward the end of the show. Dolly and Horace are eating in a a restaurant when a brawl breaks out. Horace leaves the table and joins the rest of the cast in a transition to a courtroom, but Dolly aka Bernadette Peters remained seated at the table and kept eating the stage food. I'd assumed the food was made out of plastic or cotton or something (some bits seriously looked like cotton balls), but she devoured every scrap while the rest of the scene went on behind her. Midway through the scene, Dolly is supposed to offer her services as a lawyer and join the rest of the characters, but even after the judge called for a lawyer, Bernadette Peters kept eating for, like, seven to ten minutes while the other actors waited.

It was one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life (and that's saying something). Some folks in the theatre were laughing hysterically, but I didn't find it funny, just odd. I found myself thinking things like, "Did something go wrong?" "Is Bernadette Peters messing with the rest of the cast?" and "Does Bernadette Peters have it in her contract that she has to eat a certain time?" and "Did we really pay $49 to watch Bernadette Peters eat lunch?" Finally, though, she finished eating to thunderous applause, and the scene continued.

Little Brother looked this up and confirmed that it was a director's choice and not some kind of mishap or joke. Ummmm okaaaaay director person!

The last thing about Saturday that needs to be discussed is the shower at Older Sister's apartment. Remember how we went on a tour of Greenwich Village that morning? We saw lots of interesting things on the tour, like the theatre where Barbra Streisand got started, New York City's skinniest house, the apartment building where Benedict Cumberbatch stayed when he was on Broadway, and the Stonewall Inn. One of the most intriguing, things, though, was the Hess Triangle.

When the city wanted to widen the streets, this fellow Hess, who owned an apartment building on one of the streets in question, refused to cooperate, so the government ended up seizing his land for the public good. However, Hess retained a tiny triangle of land. Being the Saltiest Person on Earth™, he decided that the only appropriate course of action was to put a plaque on the tiny triangle stating he never donated his land to the public. (At least, the tour guide said it was him. The Internet disputes this by saying it was his heirs. Who I guess would then be the Saltiest People on Earth™.)

This thing is tiny. One person can stand on it comfortably, and that's it. It's probably the most American thing I've ever seen (I say with affection).

Guess what? There were two showers in Older Sister's apartment, and one was the size of the Hess Triangle!

Well, I'm exaggerating. Slightly. It was about the size of three Hess Triangles put together. There were no walls or anything; just a shower curtain. I couldn't even have the shampoo bottle in the shower with me because there was no room.

The Hess Shower was the only shower available after 11 p.m. by the agreement of the apartment tenants. (The other shower, which was a more normal size, activated pipes that were too loud for people to sleep through.) Apart from that, because it was the less-preferred shower, it was more likely to be free in general during target shower times.

I first used it on Friday after we got back from Brooklyn. I was careful to keep the shower curtain tucked, but imagine my dismay when I exited it and discovered that I hadn't done a good enough job and the entire bathroom was flooded.

Granted, the bathroom was tiny, but there was still a couple inches of water spread uniformly across the floor. I did my best to mop it up with my towel and all of my clothing before humbling myself enough to leave the bathroom, trek past one of Older Sister's oblivious roommates who was doing laundry right outside the bathroom door, and approach Older Sister.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: So...the bathroom is flooded...

Older Sister was gracious in not hating me and in letting me take another of her three towels to mop up the floor.

So on Saturday when I had to use the shower again, I kept my body completely vertical so that I didn't nudge any of the curtains out of place! When I dropped something and had to pick it up, I was forced to do a very careful squat to recover it.

I made sure to nab the big shower on Sunday night.

The One Where I'm Short

So somewhere in this blog, I believe I mention that Little Sister likes to call me "little sister." I don't remember exactly where because like wow I don't know where anything is anymore. There are just too many posts!

In any case, there's a significant age gap between Little Sister and me. Naturally, that age gap came with a significant height gap. Then one day, my parents were videotaping their four daughters in a production of Annie and realized that Little Sister was now closer in height to me than she was to Baby Sister. Within two years, she'd overtaken me.

P.S. They stopped making S'mores by Dreyer's a while ago. But they brought it back for a bit. So I grabbed some for me and for Little Sister. And she called me "little sister." Thus I am reminiscing.

Another Weird Dream

This morning, I woke up needing to use the restroom. I dragged myself out of bed, went to the bathroom, started my morning routine, and then decided to try to catch a little more sleep before I finished getting ready. When I got back to my room, I looked at the clock and realized that it was only 3:00 a.m. Not time to get up yet!

So I went back to sleep...and had a weird dream.

I dreamed that I was a star of some big blockbuster movie starring Martin Freeman and some other people I can't remember. At the wrap-up party after the film was finished, Martin Freeman brought me a really nice gift. I brought him and everyone else a box of doughnuts to share.

We'd been filming at some strange location that was actually some kind of remote theatre camp. I kept walking in on two actors who were playing...Tom and Becky in Big River...or something? They were always talking in hush hush tones. I would retreat to a nearby hollow log that was actually the big industrial pipe in the woods in Stranger Things. (I watched two episodes of Stranger Things; I did not like it. FYI.) Anyway, while I was hiding, I could hear them talking about...hiding a dead body?! Towards the end of the dream, Goldfinger and another improv friend kept hearing them talking, too, but they pretended to be making out so that the murderers would think they weren't listening.

Not my weirdest dream, but...pretty darn weird.

The Parting of the Ways

I did at least one musical a year for eight years straight. Then I quit. I was graduating high school, and I wanted to focus on my degree.

For years, I did no theatre. I missed it, but I didn't have the time or the energy to devote to frequent rehearsals and weeks or performances. Then, one Sunday, I saw Goldfinger at a fireside.

I really didn't know Goldfinger. I'd seen him perform with the local improv troupe for years. In fact, one night he irritated me by trying to talk to me after the show while I was waiting for one of my parents to pick me up. If I recall correctly, he was trying to inform me that the theatre would be turning off its lights soon and/or making sure that I would be able to get home okay, but I usually don't like it when people I don't know approach me, even when they're trying to be helpful. I was not very responsive. A year and a half later, I saw him at Older Sister's mission farewell, where we were formally introduced. He kept listening to my conversation with Little Sister and laughing.

When I saw Goldfinger at the fireside, he remembered me. He asked about Older Sister and then blurted out, "The troupe is having open auditions on Tuesday. You should come."

I was taken aback, because although I had a lot of musical theatre experience, I didn't think he knew that. Plus I knew nothing about improv theatre. So I politely declined.

Now I tell you what, up to this point I'd only had one audition experience that I would call "spiritual." It was when I auditioned for Anne of Green Gables. At that age I'd been in three theatrical productions and was working on a fourth, but I'd never ever had any lines or been featured in any way. All of my productions had been through a children's theatre program where you paid a fee to participate, so I'd never even had a real audition. I don't think anyone thought I actually had any aptitude for theatre. I was a body to fill up the space in the chorus, and that's all. So when I saw the poster for Anne of Green Gables, I shouldn't have felt as strongly about auditioning as I did. Later in life, I realized that feeling as a prompting.

The last thing that I expected was to feel a prompting about auditioning for an improv troupe. Sure, I loved improv...as an audience member! I admired the skills Goldfinger and his colleagues possessed, but I didn't think I had them. Besides, some of the things I loved most about being in structured theatre were a) getting to be someone else rather than presenting myself to the audience as Awkward Mormon Girl Obnoxious, b) knowing exactly what I was supposed to say or supposed to do (unlike in real life, where maneuvering unexpected social situations was completely beyond me), and c) getting the chance to do the same thing over and over again; if I messed up one time, I could always do better the next. Improv had none of those things. Improv was the exact opposite of those things.

In spite of all this, though, I felt like I should go to the audition. I mean, yes, how awesome would it be if I did well at the audition and I got to work with this troupe that I'd been a fan of for years? I did consider that. The greater part of the feeling, though, was that this was something that God wanted me to do. So I decided that, what the hey, I would go to the audition.

This was back in the day when I didn't drive much, and when I headed to the audition after institute, I couldn't remember how to get to the theatre! I showed up rather late, which was extremely unprofessional and embarrassing and, for most theatrical opportunities, would have automatically disqualified me. Yet in this instance, I was still allowed to audition.

Like I said, I knew next to nothing about improv, so throughout the audition I just had to follow my basic knowledge of theatre, my own instincts, and what I'd gleaned from watching many improv comedy shows. At the end of the audition, I was surprised to realize that I'd done all right. In fact, if the comments a few of the troupe members gave me afterward were any indication, I'd done pretty darn well. And, now that I'd dipped my toes back into theatre, I not only hoped the troupe would invite me back...I knew that if they did, I probably wouldn't be able stay away.

Happily, they offered me a chance to workshop with them and learn some actual improv skills. I worked hard and had fun, and at the end of the workshop, they invited me to join the troupe.

I came to appreciate the "throwaway genius" of improv. Lack of repetition, I realized, could be a gift. Instead of trying to replicate my own performance night after night, each show was a do-over, a completely fresh opportunity.

There were some improv things that I learned to do really well. There were some things I never quite grasped, and there were some things I naturally excelled at in the beginning but which I lost under the weight of the knowledge of improv theory. All in all, though, it was a great experience with great people.

After four years, I got another prompting. This time, the prompting was not to audition, but to leave. So I left.

It was hard, because a lot of people wanted me to stay. I questioned my decision multiple times, especially as my last show loomed closer and closer. But I felt like it was the right thing to do. I felt (and still feel) like Heavenly Father wanted something else for me. Although the commitment to an improv troupe doesn't require the almost nightly commitment of a musical, musicals end. I found improv troupes require a greater commitment, just spread out over a longer period of time. That was all right with me...until suddenly, it wasn't. I know that's not a super rational explanation, but I feel like all will be made clear to me in time.

My last show was sad but also happy. A lot of kind friends and family came to see me. My troupe saw me off in a grand style, with flowers and a card.

I don't know what, exactly, lies in my future that will replace improv. I do know that someday, when I look back, I'll know why I left when I did. Sometimes, a guarantee on the future is all we can hope for.

It Seems Like a Lifetime Ago

I often get nostalgic at this time of year. The last musical that I was in took place in January of my senior year of high school. I was also in pep band, so for two or three weeks straight, when I wasn't at performances or rehearsals, I was playing my clarinet at a basketball game.

There's one night in particular stamped in my memory. After that night's basketball game, Best Friend Boy, Etch-a-Sketch, and I went to a Wendy's. Some other band members were there, including Runner Bean. (This was shortly after this disaster.)

There's a picture of us on my bedroom bookshelf from that night—Etch-a-Sketch and I on one side of the table, Best Friend Boy on the other. Our food is pictured too: Best Friend Boy bites into a sandwich; Etch-a-Sketch puts a chicken nugget in her mouth. The sandwich that Best Friend Boy kindly purchased for me sits unwrapped before me.

Runner Bean isn't pictured, but he was the focus of my evening. I remember how that one of the girls in our grade sat next to him. She was chatting at him...stealing his fries...at one point, she even ran her fingers through his hair. I remember how I felt then. What was an otherwise great evening soured, and a sick feeling condensed into a deadweight ball sitting in the middle of my stomach.

I wasn't that girl. I wasn't the fun, flirty girl who stole fries and ran her fingers through a boy's hair. I was too earnest and too intense for that. No guy I knew ever said that the thing they hoped most for in a girl was earnestness and intensity. Thus I quickly became discouraged not just about Runner Bean, but about all of my future romantic possibilities...or rather, what I feared was the lack thereof.

Yes, I know, it seems a silly thing to let one evening cause me to question the nature of my entire existence. But like I said...intensity.

The next day, as I changed into my costume and put on my makeup for that night's performance, I found that I had an unsolicited text from Best Friend Boy.

Best Friend Boy: I'm sorry Runner Bean is liked by so many girls. But he's liked for very good reasons and that is why I think he may be worthy of a daughter of [God] such as you.

That text left a deep impression on me...as you can probably tell due to the fact that I recall it at all. So much has happened since then that it feels like it happened to someone else, and I merely heard about it from a friend or read about it online somewhere. However, if my sporadic records of text messages I received in high school are to be trusted, it really did happen.

It's strange how you simply can't forget some small, seemingly insignificant things, isn't it?

Join the Fam

Oh, in case you didn't know, Little Sister is engaged.

You know those emojis with hearts coming out of their eyes? That's what Little Sister looks like. Hearts are coming out of her eyes. Every. Day. Nonstop. If it weren't so novel, it would get old.

The future Mr. Little Sister is one of Little Sister's longtime friends. His family lives just a few blocks from my family. He and Little Sister grew up together; they were even baptized on the same day. It's a good match.

One can't help but feeling sorry for Mr. Little Sister, though. Why? Well, never having dated anyone, I didn't realize this until just recently...but, I mean, think about it. What is a family? A family is essentially a clique that has been together their entire lives. They have years and years of not only shared genes but also experience, stories, and jokes. Think about trying to break into that exclusive group.

Yikes.

I wouldn't say that we Obnoxiouses are snobs. For the most part, my family on both sides has a history of welcoming all kinds of people, related or not, and making them part of us. However, just because we're welcoming, that doesn't mean it's easy to fit in with us. We are a peculiar people.

On Sundays, I go to my parents' house for family dinner. Mr. Little Sister has joined us each week since the engagement. Each week, I've analyzed our dinner conversations from the viewpoint of an outsider. Here's how it's gone:

Week One Topic of Conversation: Family joke night. We told Mr. Little Sister every stupid joke we know. Most of them aren't funny but he, bless his heart, still laughed.

We also burst into song at one point. Luckily, Mr. Little Sister comes from a musical family, so he was able to join in right away. Good job, Mr. Little Sister!

Week Two Topic of Conversation: Nancy Drew and...nope, that's pretty much it. We essentially spent all of dinner talking about our favorite Nancy Drew games. Mr. Little Sister hasn't played those games (although I'm sure that will change shortly). He was left listening valiantly to our ramblings.

Week Three Topic of Conversation: Ginger Cousin. Musical theatre (that is something Mr. Little Sister knows quite a lot about). And then we took a dramatic veer and started trying to decide which Greek goddess is most like our mom.

Apparently, you need to brush up on your mythology if you want to eat dinner with our family.

And did I mention that all six of the Obnoxious children can carry on two conversations at once? I can either talk to one sibling while listening to another sibling talk to me, or I can listen to two siblings talking to me simultaneously. Often, dinner devolves into all of us talking over one another in a chain of conversation. We don't even notice we're doing it until somebody points it out to us!

It seems that, after three weeks of being initiated into our family, most people would have concluded that we are too much to be borne. The fact that Mr. Little Sister has stuck around tells me that he and Little Sister are meant to be.

Adulting, First Class

I'm a fraud.

I've been an adult for years, and I still have no idea what I'm doing.

A few months ago, I decided to buy a new product with which to clean my shower. I had been using the generic cleaner that I used on the bathroom sink, but it didn't seem to work on the shower very well. I had no idea what to put on my grocery list, though. I was leaning towards, "Something to clean the shower with but I don't even know what people use for that so yeah."

When I had to sign up for benefits for my full-time position, I could hardly understand a word in the retirement program package. It was all, "Blah blah you should save this much unless you plan to be in a higher tax bracket when you retire in which case you should save this much." What? How does one plan to achieve a higher tax bracket? How would I even know I'd achieved a higher tax bracket? I don't even know what tax bracket I'm in now!

I just don't feel like I'm actually an adult. I feel like I'm in a perpetual state of audition to be said adult, and that any moment now somebody with a clipboard is going to come up to me and say, "Sorry, we've decided not to cast you in the role of Adult. You can leave now." Except that keeps not happening. But nobody gives me a script, either. But if I'm ever like, "Wait, what's happening? What are we doing?" then all of the other people in the role of Adult are like, "Ha ha! You've been doing this for years. You should totally know what we're doing!" and then proceed to not explain anything. (Except for my parents, who are pretty understanding of my lack of adultness, probably because they still see a child when they look at me because I will always be a child to them because parents.) It's like it's all one humongous charade, and it's terribly blasé to point out that the charade is indeed a charade.

Does anyone else know what I mean???

When you know that you don't know anything about being an adult, you start to question the validity of adult things you do. When I say adult things, I mean things that you don't realize you have to do until you are an adult and you realize that someone has to do them or they don't get done. For example, when you go to Disneyland, somebody has to buy the plane tickets, book a ride from the airport to the hotel, book the hotel, arrange for a ride from the hotel to Disneyland, buy the tickets for Disneyland, make any Disney dining reservations, and so on and so forth. I was the person who did all of those things except book the hotel and arrange rides to Disneyland (Pepper booked the hotel, and the hotel happily had a shuttle going directly to Disneyland). This meant that, as our Disneyland trip drew nearer, the more convinced I became that it wasn't going to happen. After all, I'd never bought plane tickets or booked a ride from an airport or bought Disneyland tickets before. I'd never had to be the responsible adult who did that. I was vastly unprepared to be the responsible adult who did that, and thus in my total inexperience I must have done something wrong. You follow?

In short, I was a nervous wreck up until the last minute possible.

I was a nervous wreck while packing.

I was a nervous wreck as I printed off our Disneyland tickets, our flight itineraries, our SuperShuttle itineraries, and our reservation information. Were all of those things accessible from my phone? Absolutely. But I wasn't about to take any chances, not even when I had a portable phone charger with enough juice for two full charges.

I was a nervous wreck 24 hours before our flight, when I discovered a strange error on my and my roommates' plane tickets. Instead of being separated (like this: Awkward Mormon Girl Middle Name Obnoxious), they were squished together (like this: AwkwardMormonGirlMiddleName Obnoxious). I called the airline (which ugh ugh ugh). The particular airline worker to whom I was connected proceeded to call me "honey" throughout our interaction.

I told her that our names were showing up weird and obviously I had to fix that or else our boarding passes wouldn't match our IDs and then nobody would let us on the plane because they would think we were terrorists.

The worker brought up our flight information and informed me that, apparently, our first and middle names had been squished together because they were too long and they wouldn't fit on the boarding passes otherwise.

"So it won't be a problem?" I asked.

"No, honey. They can look at your passenger data and see your real names there."

I went to bed, cheered, and then realized that I should not be cheered. Problem or not, it was still one more thing to worry about!

The next day, at the airport, I had like seven fits of anxiety about what was going to happen. You'd think I could just relax, knowing that I had prepared as much as I possibly could, and leave well enough alone. But I couldn't leave well enough alone, because by arranging most everything I had made myself the mother, father, orphan-raising big sister, and other assorted legal guardians of the entire trip. I was responsible for everything.

"We're fine," I said over and over. "Everything is fine. There's no reason why anything should go wrong." And yet I kept expecting that something would.

However, the Seamstress, Pepper, Little Brother, and I were on time for the airport. I'd remembered the papers with our confirmation codes. Everyone had their ID. There were no problems with our boarding passes, nobody was accused of being a terrorist, Little Brother wasn't accused of being an adult trying to pass as a teenager, I wasn't accused of being a teenager trying to pass as an adult, we found the right gate, and the weather was great. The plane didn't crash on the way to Cali, either. When we got to LAX, we found my luggage and the shuttle pickup without too much trouble.

And lo and behold! The weather was...pleasant. The natives were all bundled up in big coats, but we were enjoying the balminess of the breeze. Our shuttle took us to our hotel, we checked in, we found our room. Lo and behold again! Our room was one of the nicer hotel rooms I've stayed in.

I was exhausted, what with the long day I'd had at work and the travel and the amount of anxiety I had exerted over the past 24 hours. I went to bed as soon as I was able...and hardly slept all night. It was anxiety again. But this time...it was good anxiety. I was as excited as I get the night before Christmas!

Finally, it was time to wake up. It wasn't long before everyone was washed, dressed, groomed, fed, and waiting impatiently on the curb for the Disneyland shuttle.

As we waited, it was now Pepper's turn to be anxious. As I said before, Pepper was the one responsible for this portion of the trip, and she started to worry that the shuttle wasn't going to come as expected. "I know everything is fine," she said, "but..."

Apparently, the greater portion of adulthood is knowing everything is fine but worrying about it regardless.

Lip Sync Caroling

I had a lovely story ready to tell today, but alas, instead of writing it up I sat at the kitchen counter, reading a fantasy novel while eating pumpkin spice truffles.

I struggle with pacing these days. I live at the speed of light, with no time penciled in for relaxing or cleaning or eating or sleeping. My weekends are set aside for doing all the things I can't do during the week. Once it arrives, however, I find myself profoundly exhausted, and I crash and burn.

So I won't be telling you a story tonight. I will, however, tell you that Baby Sister and Little Brother showed up at my place tonight, wearing newsie-style caps. They knocked on my apartment door and, when I opened it, started to perform a lip sync and a well-choreographed dance to the Backyardigans theme.

"We're lip sync caroling," they explained after their performance. They then got back in their car and drove away in search of their next audience.

Sometimes my life astounds me.

Nothing's as Amazing as a Musical

Context: This post is about the fifth day (and fourth day in the city) of my second New York City trip.

When we got back to Older Sister's dorm after School of Rock, all of her roommate's stuff was gone.

Goodbye, Older Sister's roommate. That we never saw. I don't know how that girl was getting in and out of 35 Fifth Avenue so sneakily. Probably it helped that she actually lived there. My younger sisters and I, as guests, had to produce our guest passes and photo IDs to the security guard every time we came through the door. These security guard changed every few hours, and they came in a wide variety. Some of them were friendly and polite. Some of them were totally indifferent. Some seemed almost antagonistic.

Anyways, I'm sure Older Sister's roommate wasn't thinking of our convenience, but her abrupt departure was a blessing nonetheless. We immediately strewed our stuff around the room, and Little Sister claimed the now-empty bed for her own. Older Sister didn't have work in the morning, so we could all sleep in if we wanted to. Now we were really living in style!

But we didn't want to sleep in. At the last minute, we decided that, since we'd hauled our American Girl dolls across the country, we were definitely going back to the American Girl Place to try our luck with the hair appointments.

The lady had said that we needed to be there as soon after 9:00 as possible. We got there around 9:20. Would there even be any appointments left at a time that we could go? We weren't sure. It was a Saturday, and there would be a lot of parents off work bringing their daughters, and a lot of tourists, and—and—and—

—and we rushed in, rushed up the stairs, and rushed to the pink-floored area where hair appointments could be made. And got appointments for all three of our dolls within the hour!

Watching our dolls get their hair done was so cute! They had miniature hairstyling chairs with miniature aprons to protect the dolls' clothes, just like in real life. The hairstyles we chose came with complimentary hair ribbons in the colors of our choices.

As she worked, the hairstylist told us that she had Molly when she was a little girl. She'd actually invented a hairstyle for Molly (pictured below). That was gratifying because growing up, it always seemed like Samantha was the most popular doll. It was nice for Molly girl to get some love.

A flipped ponytail with a braid for Molly!

Once our dolls' hairs had been brushed, sprayed, styled, and trimmed (we learned that, as the doll hair loosens over the years, it actually grows a little), they looked almost new. Little Sister and Baby Sister chose to also get Samantha and Kit's ears pierced. So many childhood dreams come true!

While we were in the neighborhood, we grabbed tickets for the top of the Rockefeller Center for 11:00 p.m. Little Sister and I had decided that, of all the cliché tourist-y things we could have taken Baby Sister to do during the trip, this was the one that we were willing to spend money on. We'd have just enough time to make it after our show ended that night.

We proudly escorted our dolls and their beautiful hair back to Older Sister's place. Older Sister accompanied us during a quiet lunch of meat pies and lemonade at the Union Square farmer's market, then to the matinee of Something Rotten!

The rest of the day was devoted to musical theatre.

First, Something Rotten! We saw this show last year, just weeks after it opened. I didn't like the moments of crude humor, but I loved the cleverness and the well-delivered performances.

By this point, July 2016, the show has been running for some fifteen, sixteen months. The leading man, Brian D'arcy James, left the show just a few months ago. So there was a new (but very excellent) leading man. The rest of the cast—John Cariani, Christian Borle, et al—was still there. And they did a good job, no question. But I could tell that they'd been doing this show for a long time and that they had gotten slightly bored with it. How could I tell that? Because every single main performer, except the girl playing Portia, was doing everything they'd done the last time I saw the show plus 200% more. They were hamming it up, over-exaggerating their character's quirks, delivering their lines new ways. Some of what they did was quite funny. Still, I felt like the original interpretations of the characters were much better and that the performance this time was a little jarring. To be fair, it may also have been the matinee slump; I feel like matinees never have the same energy as a nighttime performance.

So Something Rotten! is still great, but I didn't like it as much this time around.

Afterward, it was time to get dinner, but said dinner was essentially another musical theatre performance because we went to Ellen's Stardust Diner!

As soon as they let us into Ellen's (there was a line coming out of the building and wrapping around the corner), it was easy to see that the place was a classic tourist trap. In other words, everything was unjustifiably expensive. We were aware beforehand of the tourist trappiness yet chose to eat dinner there anyways. Why? Because singing waiters, that's why!

View from the balcony.

See, Ellen's wait staff is a bunch of actors and actresses who are either trying to get into a Broadway show, are between Broadway shows, or were on Broadway once but haven't been able to break back in. So while you eat your over-priced food, they sing and dance to karaoke tracks. Or rather, they belt and dance, because every wait staff personnel who sang that night seemed to have a Broadway-style belt. They belted songs from the radio and from Oklahoma. A guy and a girl belted "Suddenly Seymour." Five or six of them did "One Day More" from different parts of the restaurant: upstairs, downstairs, wherever, until they met at the front for the grand finale.

I also enjoyed the general atmosphere of Ellen's. The building style and the interior decor reminded me of a restaurant called Galaxy that I loved as a kid. Also, the chicken pot pie, though definitely overpriced, was the best chicken pot pie I've ever had.

The chicken pot pie: basically chicken stew (with mushrooms) that was topped with a square phyllo dough.

Towards the end of our meal, the manager guy, who had the voice of Fred Figglehorn, gave a speech about how, if we'd enjoyed our entertainment, we should put some money into the bucket they were passing around. The bucket money went towards paying for singing, dancing, and acting lessons for the wait staff.

I put a dollar in. When I graduated from college, I had two things: an arts degree and no real hope that I'd ever earn a steady paycheck. I've been fortunate to be as successful as I have. I could spare a dollar to help other creative-type people hone their skills and, hopefully, find work in their chosen field just as I've been able to find work in mine.

After Ellen's, we said good-bye to Older Sister, who was not going with us to the final musical of the trip, Waitress.

Waitress deserves praise for its clever use of theming alone. Based on a movie I've never seen, the musical is about a waitress who bakes pies to express her feelings about life events. The moment we entered the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, we were hit with the scent of fresh-baked pie. I don't know how they bottled that scent, but it was there, and it was amazing.

Then, before the show and during intermission, the theatre had people walking up and down the aisles selling tiny pies in jars. I wasn't super hungry after my delicious pot pie, but I decided that the experience of eating a tiny pie in a Broadway theatre while watching a show about pie was not to be missed.

This cute jar held one tiny, chocolate-Oreo pie!

And what about the show itself? Delightful! Sara Bareilles wrote the music and lyrics, which were fun. The performances were top-notch, particularly Jessie Mueller and Kimiko Glenn. There was one song that got really inappropriate, and a few instances of abstract dance-exposition that got a little weird. Still, though, it was entertaining and engrossing and emotional.

Some food for thought: Waitress is a musical about difficult, serious things; so is Fiddler on the Roof. Even though the subject matter is painful, the musicals themselves are fun. I think that's what people love about musicals...good ones usually don't take themselves too seriously, because it's hard to be serious when somebody is liable to burst into song and dance at any minute. Yet in spite of, or maybe because of, the levity, musicals often convey touching and life-changing messages. There isn't another art form quite like it.

After the show ended, we raced to the Rockefeller Center, where we boarded an elevator headed for the Top of the Rock. It was almost closing time, so the observation decks weren't too crowded. We got lots of pictures as we gazed out over the city.

I'm a night person; I think most clearly at night. And there's something about an inspiring landscape that makes the human soul ponder its utmost desires. I looked out at New York City and its skyscrapers and its parks and its patriotic red, white, and blue 4th of July lights, and I thought about what I wanted. I'd seen so little of the vast city, and I wanted to see more, someday, if I had the opportunity to return. Yet part of me wasn't sure that I wanted the opportunity to return. That part of me hoped that I would find myself doing more important stuff in the near future and that I would have neither the time nor the money to come back, simply because I would be spending that time and money on other, dearer things.

I looked, and I thought, but there was nothing on the horizon to indicate what the future might hold.

And that was my last night in New York City. I'd been planning blog posts in my head all week, and I wondered if I would even write about our trip home the next day. It seemed like I might not have anything to say about that.

I was wrong.

A Map in Central Park

Context: This post is about the fourth day (and third day in the city) of my second New York City trip.

It seems like a disproportionate of my blog posts about New York talk about how we couldn't find one place or another.

Well, let me tell you. Finding addresses in that town can be a little difficult sometime. The problem is that while the street-and-avenue grid system is not so hard, the numbers on the actual buildings don't work the way they do in Utah. Here, the buildings between, say, 6th and 7th West are labeled as such: 602 West, 628 West, 656 West, etcetera, with the lower numbers being closer to 6th West and the higher numbers being closer to 7th West. But in New York City, if you were looking for 250 43rd Street, 250 wouldn't necessarily indicate that the building was between 2nd and 3rd Avenue. The building numbers are essentially useless.

...or are they? I actually researched the NYC numbering system for this blog post, just to be sure that I wasn't missing something. It turns out, according to multiple websites, that if you take a New York City building number, drop the last digit, divide the remainder by 2, and add or subtract a number from a special chart that some genius developed, you will get the number of the nearest cross street.

So, yeah, essentially useless.

On Friday morning, Little Sister, Baby Sister, and I set out for Chinatown. Well, actually, that wasn't the first thing we did. First we went to the Barnes and Noble on Union Square.

I think I know what you're thinking: You spent your vacation at Barnes and Noble, a place that you can visit not only at home but at literally almost any halfway decent town in the country?

I stand by my decision because a) books and b) you ain't never seen a Barnes and Noble like this before. There are rolling ladders attached to the shelves everywhere. Sadly, customers aren't supposed to climb on them, but I swear that one of these times that I'm in New York I'm going to get my sisters to distract the employees so that I can sail around on the ladder like Belle does in the bookshop in Beauty and the Beast.

After our Barnes and Noble break, we took the subway, got off on Canal Street, and began to roam the nearby area in our search for Chinatown.

Not even dropping digits and dividing by two would save us, because we weren't trying to get to any particular building. Where were we going? We didn't know. Just to some of the open-air shops for souvenirs and then to a restaurant for lunch. As neither "open-air shops" nor "restaurant for lunch" are viable locations for iPhones, we sort of wandered helplessly as we tried to figure out the best way to find this particular section of the city.

Finally, we found it. We almost got run over by a truck (okay, not exactly, but I tell you that this truck looked like it was going to hit us and my life flashed before my very eyes and it was okay but I've seen better movies), but we found it. We did a little shopping, and then we got dim sum: shrimp dumplings, sweet pork buns, potstickers, and crispy, juicy roasted duck! Delicious.

These are shrimp dumplings. My favorite dim sum dishes are these dumplings, sweet pork buns, and egg custard tarts. So if you ever have a hankering to bring me dim sum, you know what I like.

Then we faced the uncertainty of New York City navigation again so that we could go to Little Italy so that we could buy cannolis and gelato. Baby Sister tried a cannoli for the first time. I had my first cannoli in Italy, but if you can't have your first cannoli in Italy, have it in Little Italy in NYC.

Chocolate-covered cannoli!

But the very worst place to navigate in New York City is Central Park.

Some of you may remember the day we spent in Central Park last year. Little Sister and I really, really, really wanted to see the carousel. I don't know why, but we did. We spent an hour or more trying to find it. Spoiler alert: we did not find it. And, to paraphrase the words of Anne Shirley, it was one of the most tragical disappointments of my life.

I wrote this:

I'm going to make a quick observation, which is that Central Park needs some map kiosks with paper maps, like they have at Disneyland or the zoo. And if Central Park already has maps somewhere within its expansive borders, then there needs to be some other maps leading to those maps.

This time, things went considerably better.

First of all, apparently Central Park heard the words that my fingers typed (mixed metaphor, whatever, go with it), because they had a few banners with maps hanging around the park. And there were people who were selling expensive, unofficial paper maps at the entrance. But we didn't buy them because we felt like we could probably manage with our secret weapons: the smartphone!

Last May, Older Sister was afraid to leave her data on when we were roaming Central Park, so it was difficult to know if we were staying on course. This year, we all had smartphones, and we'd anticipated using a goodly portion of our data on the trip.

So this time, we left the smartphones on as we walked. Smartphone maps are easily confused, so it was still a little difficult, but within half an hour or so we found...

Ta-da!

...THE CAROUSEL!

They charged $3 a ride, which was not asking too much for a ride on a MAGICAL CAROUSEL OF JOY AND GLADNESS. I'm serious. It was wonderful. Don't ask me why. It just was.

We also hit the Chess & Checkers House and Strawberry Fields. Then, as we were heading towards the Alice in Wonderland statue, something wonderful happened.

A Central Park Conservancy ranger stopped us. 

"Do you want a map?" he asked.

We said no thanks.

"It's free."

We changed our minds.

He asked us where we were going. He drew a route for us on a paper map and then gave the map into our keeping.

Central Park!!! Good job. You have surpassed all of my wildest map dreams.

At the Alice in Wonderland statue we met up with Older Sister. Then, alas, it started to rain.

To get out of the rain, we hastened to The Plaza. Little Sister and I, when planning the trip, had decided it would be fun to take Baby Sister to eat there...in the food court below the hotel. So it sounds a lot fancier than it was. It was still good, though. I had a delicious smoked salmon-cream cheese-caper crepe and a classic Nutella crepe for dessert. (Yes, I had three desserts that day! We had multiple desserts every day, actually, but you can't blame us. New York City is the Land of Many Desserts.)

After the rain, we wondered the streets of the city. We went into several fancy stores, such as Tiffany's. The employees there were very nice and called us "ladies." At Tiffany's, we were told we could take pictures of whatever we wanted...since I guess it was obvious that we weren't there to shop.

Finally, it was time for us to go to School of Rock.

The ladders at Barnes and Noble were a high point of the day.

So was dim sum, cannolis, and gelato.

So was the carousel.

But School of Rock was the best.

I have to say, I had my doubts going into it. First of all, it's Andrew Lloyd Webber. My perception is that Andrew Lloyd Webber is Broadway's M. Night Shyamalan. Everyone used to love everything he did, but then he made something so terrible (coughTheLastAirbendercoughLoveNeverDiescough) that now he's kind of a joke. Second of all, after seeing Finding Neverland, I was worried that this musical would have the same problem. I was worried it would lose what was great about the movie while simultaneously not bringing anything new to the table. Still, the Tony performance of "You're in the Band" was good; Alex Brightman looked like he was matching Jack Black's energy, so maybe there was hope.

So on Friday night we got to the Winter Garden Theatre, took our seats, opened our programs, and looked at the list of replacements.

And Alex Brightman was not there.

His understudy was playing that night.

Another of life's tragical disappointments!

Also, Luca Padovan, who played Les in Newsies, has a leading role in School of Rock, and I was looking forward to seeing him because I've only heard good things about him. But his understudy was playing that night, too.

So it was with considerable reluctance that we waited for the show to begin.

Then the lights dimmed, and they played a recording of Andrew Lloyd Webber. I know it was Andrew Lloyd Webber, because he said, "This is Andrew Lloyd Webber," in his prissy accent. He then informed us that people always asked whether the kids were, in fact, really playing their instruments live. The answer to that question was yes, Andrew Lloyd Webber said.

Thanks, Andrew Lloyd Webber. Thanks for sharing.

Then the show began. And...oh my goodness...it was awesome. It hit all the right notes. It kept almost every line from the movie, verbatim, which you'd think would be boring but totally wasn't. The kid actors? So good! And the understudy, Will Klum? A-freaking-mazing! I forgot he was the understudy!

During the Battle of the Bands, we, the audience, became the Battle of the Bands audience, so suddenly we were basically at a rock concert and an important part of the show. That was fun, but awkward, because we were chanting the "School of Rock! School of Rock!" before Dewey and company were supposed to hear the audience calling them for an encore. They basically had to wait for us to stop chanting so that they could deliver their lines.

All around, a perfect adaptation and a super fun musical. We loved it so much that we stage doored afterward.

Stage dooring, for you non-theatre people, is when you wait by theatre's exit for the cast members to come out. We'd already been planning to stage door, but if we hadn't loved the show so much we probably would have just gone back to the dorm. It was still raining hard. Like, parts of the sidewalk were actually flooded with a few inches of water. In spite of that, Little Sister and I shoved my crumpled, wet playbill into the actors' faces so that they could sign it with silver marker. I later posted some of the signatures on Instagram and tagged the actors. Other actors in the show liked the photo, and the official School of Rock Instagram actually commented on it! *swoons*

On the way home, we grabbed a bite (Wendy's for my sisters, Halal for me) and headed home, full of excitement and hopped up on a show well done. It was a long time before I got to bed.

In Which Nothing Goes as Planned

Context: This post is about the second day (and first day in the city) of my second New York City trip.

According to Wikipedia, Joe Biden likes to refer to LaGuardia Airport as a “third world country.” Also, apparently the airport is ranked as the worst in the nation.

I don't know that I could confidently say that LaGuardia is either comparable to a third-world country or the worst airport in the nation. I can say for sure that it was a little crowded. I can also say for sure that, unlike at JFK, there was no convenient airtrain that would get us to the subway system. There was only a rather expensive bus. Little Sister researched our options and determined that taking a taxi from LaGuardia to the Times Square area would likely be less expensive per capita than it would be to pay for the bus.

The plan for the day went as such:

1. Freshen up in the airport bathrooms.

2. Take a taxi to our hotel. Because Older Sister would be at work when we arrived, there was nobody to let us into her internship dormitory, not even for a hot second so we could drop off our luggage. We'd therefore had to engage a hotel room for the first night.

3. Leave our luggage with the concierge/bellhops/whoever while we went out into the city.

4. Race to Ham4Ham in front of the Richard Rodgers Theatre. During the afternoon, cast members from Hamilton stand outside the theatre and did short performances. Little Sister really wanted to go, and Older Sister really wanted us to go. If we hurried, we'd make it.

5. Have lunch at the Shake Shack.

6. Go to the American Girl Place. Get our dolls' hair done.

7. Take a nap (because red eye flights).

8. Meet up with Older Sister in Times Square for cheesecake at Junior's.

9. Go to The Color Purple.

10. Have dinner after the show at Carmine's. Little Sister had made us a reservation.

'Twas a fairly simple, ten-step plan. But it did not come together as we'd thought it would.

First, the bathroom lines at LaGuardia were quite long. Baby Sister sallied forth to change, brush her teeth and hair, and put on makeup. Because the lines were so long, and because someone had to stay behind to watch the carry-ons, we decided that we'd make better time if Little Sister and I freshened up after we claimed our luggage.

I should explain the luggage situation to you. American Airlines, unlike every other airline I've ever traveled with, does not allow you to have a complimentary checked bag. You can have one carry-on, one personal item, and that's it. If you want to check a bag, you have to pay $25.

Since we had a hard financial limit for this trip, we'd bought American Airlines tickets because they were cheaper. Then, we decided, we would check only one large suitcase containing only toiletries.

"Only toiletries" somehow turned into toiletries and three American Girl dolls and some jelly shoes for Older Sister and granola bars and fruit to eat for breakfast. And then, since we were going to be sleeping on the floor in Older Sister's place, we had to add some sleeping pads and sleeping bags and some other things. And then, since our individual suitcases could only be carry-on size, each of us ended up shifting a certain amount of personal luggage into the big suitcase.

Getting that thing zipped up was a miracle. That they didn't charge us extra for it was another miracle. As it was, my carry-on ended up being slightly too fat so they checked that one, too, as a courtesy.

So, in short, we had four suitcases: three smaller but very packed ones and one ginormous and even more packed one. We also had Little Sister's backpack, Baby Sister's pillow, and my pillow-stuffed-into-an-Urban Outfitters-bag creation that held my journal, electronics, scriptures, and other necessities for flying overnight.

We hauled our carry-ons down to the baggage claim, where we picked up the large suitcase and my intended carry-on. Because there were no nearby bathrooms, Little Sister and I once again delayed our freshening up. We supposed we'd take care of that when we reached the hotel. So we went to get a taxi.

Yes, a taxi! I was very excited to ride in a taxi for the first time. Maybe it was the exhaustion from the flight or maybe it was the unpleasantness of being icky from 36 hours of no bathing, but the taxi ride turned out to not be that exciting. My sisters and I all sat in a stilted and tired silence while the driver expertly guided the cab around the outskirts of the city. There was a little TV that played the same six minutes of programming on an endless loop, which was annoying, but the real nemesis of Fun Times in a Taxi turned out to be the taxi's meter.

My understanding of the taxi was that we were charged, not by distance, but by time spent in the taxi and by tolls on the road. All that was well and good, but traffic was such that we ended up taking 50% longer than Little Sister's estimates had suggested. That meant paying 50% more, which meant staring at the meter in horror as the price climbed and climbed and climbed. By the time we reached our hotel near Times Square, we'd reached what seemed practically the Everest of taxi fares!

As we prepared to exit the taxi, Little Sister tried to pay using the little card machine in the back seat. Notice the operative word tried...because this was how we discovered that Little Sister's credit card was not working.

In the end, I paid for the taxi, and our driver helped us get our oodles of luggage out of his taxi. He probably drove away wondering how we would manage in this city, since I think we appeared to be a lot more incompetent than we liked to think that we were.

Gathering together our luggage, we entered the doors of the Manhattan at Times Square hotel.

The lobby of this hotel was nice. It smelled similarly to the hotel we'd stayed in last time (cigarette smoke covered by the scent of cleaners) except the cigarette smoke undertones were much, much stronger. And the line of people waiting in the lobby was much, much longer. Everyone was trying to check in, even thought check-in time wasn't for several hours.

Little Sister asked the concierge where we could leave our luggage. She pointed us to some bellhop-type workers who were loading luggage onto carts and taking the carts away. We approached one of these workers, a man whose nametag read Hector. Hector had a thick Brooklyn accent.

Little Sister said that we wanted to leave our luggage. Hector asked us what room we were in, and Little Sister said that we hadn't checked in.

"Oh, no," Hector said. "I'm not putting your luggage in storage if you haven't tried to check in yet. If they have a room ready, I'll have to get your luggage out again and take it to your room. That's double the work. And I refuse to do double the work."

"The lady over there told us we could leave our luggage here," Little Sister said. Little Sister tends to be all giggly and sweet with strangers; this was the first time I'd seen her visibly annoyed with someone she didn't know.

But Hector refused to listen to us. Giving up on explaining that we had no intention of checking in right now, that we only wanted to drop our luggage off and rush to Ham4Ham, Little Sister got into the very long line for check in while Baby Sister and I extricated our American Girl dolls from the big suitcase. I also looked for a bathroom in the lobby where we could freshen up. I found one but, unfortunately, it could only be entered by using a room key.

After some twenty minutes or so of waiting, Little Sister returned to us with the news that there were no rooms available for checking in. We'd suspected as much, which was one of the reasons we had decided it would be best to merely drop the luggage off. So we went back to the bellhop area.

Hector was no longer there; it was another fellow now. We asked if we could put our luggage in storage. He said yes, then asked if there was anything else we needed.

"No, we're fine," we said.

The bellhop looked at us with pursed lips and raised eyebrow. His expression seemed to say, "I don't buy that for an instant."

After a moment of hesitation, I ventured, "Well, we wanted to change, but it looks like the bathroom needs a room key to get into it, so..."

"I can get you a bathroom key," he said.

Quickly, and at long last, Little Sister and I were able to brush our teeth, change our clothes, and put on our sunscreen. We left our luggage to be put into storage. Then, with Samantha, Kit, and Molly in tow, we headed to Ham4Ham.

How was New York City? About the same as it was the last time I saw it. Loud, crowded, too many people surging across the street at green lights. Part of me was all, "Oh, hello, I've been here before, and I sort of belong, and I'm not fazed by any of this." Part of me was all, "Ahhh! I'm back! I can't believe I'm back!"

We'd planned to be at Ham4Ham at least half an hour early, but the delayed taxi and the checking in and all had conspired against us. We got there right before the show began, and the place was packed. Barriers had been set up in the street. Cops were yelling and herding people off the sidewalks, but a lot of the people they were herding weren't moving simply because there was nowhere to go. We ended up pressed into a mass of strangers.

Behind us, I could hear passersby struggling to get through. I heard some people say things like, "Oh, it looks like we've gone the wrong way! We'd better turn around." I think those people were tourists. I also heard somebody yell as they passed, "Get used to it! It only gets worse!" I think that was a local.

Then Lin-Manuel Miranda came out of the Richard Rodgers Theatre, and the crowd went nuts.

I find the Hamilton craze both bewildering and amusing. Last year, on our tour of SoHo, Chinatown, and Little Italy, the tour guide mentioned how during the first recorded murder trial in U.S. history, both Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton were present. I said, "Oooh," but no one else in the group seemed to understand the soap opera melodrama of this circumstance. Yet now, some people would probably consider that tidbit one of the most interesting parts of the tour—but only because of Hamilton, not because they've suddenly gained more interest in important U.S. historical figures in general. As for me, I wouldn't call myself a Hamilton fan; I know some things about Hamilton that make me want to see it and some things that make me not want to see it. We'll see. And although I like some of the songs from other musicals Lin-Manuel Miranda has done, I wouldn't consider myself a particular fan of his, either.

The point is, the crowd went nuts, but I didn't. Even so, I jumped up and down a little so that I was able to see the famed composer and Broadway star. Yes, I got to see Lin-Manuel Miranda with my own two eyes! How many people get that opportunity? I wasn't so apathetic that I didn't realize that this was a rare chance. I know a lot of people who would have loved to be in my place.

Anyways, Ham4Ham lasted around twenty minutes. We could see and hear almost nothing, but Little Sister seemed happy just to be there. Afterward, we briefly met up with Older Sister, who was on her lunch break. Then we ventured off to Shake Shack.

By this point, Baby Sister had been becoming acquainted with the city for a few hours. I felt bad that she'd only seen the bad parts of the city, like driving in the the traffic and being squished in the massive crowd outside the Richard Rodgers Theatre. She also seemed pretty horrified by the way none of the New York pedestrians actually seemed to pay attention to the lights at the crosswalks. Now that we'd gotten the uncertainty of the first few hours behind us, however, Little Sister and I were determined that she should enjoy herself. After all, we had really good plans for the rest of the day!

Having lunch at Shake Shack would be a good pick-me-up, I thought. I admit, I'm not the most ardent of Shake Shack fans. I like their concretes far more than I like their burgers. Still, it's not half bad.

This time, the line outside was not as long. We ordered, waited for our food, and found a place to sit. Last time we were there, it was crowded inside. This time...it was just as crowded inside. Maybe more so. We struggled to find a way to eat while keeping our American Girl dolls safe. We ended up eating while standing. At one point, I noticed a sign that said that if the building exceeded more than 100 people, it was violating the NYC fire code. Shake Shack must violate the fire code routinely. Both times I've visited there had to be 100 people in there and, probably, more.

Instead of getting a burger, I got the Chicken Shack, which was delicious, and a chocolate concrete with chocolate truffle cookie dough, which defied description (in a good way). Unfortunately, Baby Sister had some complications in ordering her burger, so it turned up without basic things like lettuce and mayonnaise. She was visibly disappointed.

Not even Shake Shack was showing itself to Baby Sister at its best advantage. I began to wonder if Baby Sister was even going to like her graduation trip or if we would have been better off going to, say, Disneyland.

With lunch out of the way, we proceeded to the American Girl Place.

Please remember that we'd been carrying our dolls around all day. We took them with us to Ham4Ham and Shake Shack. A lady squished against us at Ham4Ham had commented on them, joking that if we lifted our dolls up high enough, they, at least, would be able to see what was going on. Other than that, though, people had mostly just ignored them. There are way more interesting things to see in New York City than three grown women carrying around 18-inch dolls.

But when we arrived at the American Girl place, we pretty much became an instant attraction. Little girls who were carrying their own dolls seemed fascinated by ours.

"Is that your baby?" one little girl in the bathroom asked me. I introduced Molly to her. She and her friends seemed really excited and told me about their own dolls. One of their mothers said that she remembered Molly, Kit, and Samantha from when she was a little girl.

Baby Sister was finally starting to get excited. The doll holders in the bathroom, the displays of the dolls and their accessories, the station for doll ear piercing—it was her inner child's dream come true!

Miss Molly McIntire in the American Girl Place bathroom.

We went to the hair station to make hair appointments for our dolls.

"Our next appointment is at 7:30," the lady said. Which was in the middle of The Color Purple.

We were dismayed, because we weren't sure if we'd have time to come back on another day. The only time we could maybe come back was on Saturday morning. We asked if we could make appointments for then.

"You have to be here the day of to make appointments," the lady said. "We open at nine at Saturday. The sooner you can get here, the better."

Our dreams of getting our dolls' hair done crushed, we left the American Girl Place in lowish spirits. We were able to pick them up slightly by picking up chocolate cupcakes with chocolate buttercream frosting from Magnolia Bakery, but just slightly.

Little Sister seemed bent on reassuring Baby Sister that the day's experiences didn't necessarily represent what the rest of the trip would be like. "When we were here last year," she said, "the first day was the worst day." Implicit in her statement was a promise: it will get better.We went back to the hotel, claimed our luggage, napped, and then changed for Baby Sister's first Broadway musical.

We met Older Sister at Times Square, had cheesecake at Junior's, showed Baby Sister our favorite Broadway souvenir shops, took some photos, and went to The Color Purple. 

Chocolate mousse cheesecake at Junior's!

We were divided in our opinions about The Color Purple. I hadn't actually wanted to see it; Viola had read the book in high school and found it to be really disturbing. "I mean, there are some beautiful parts," she said, "but-" But the sexual and physical abuse was too graphic and too prevalent for the beautiful parts to really shine through, she seemed to imply.

Older Sister, though, saw it a few weeks before we came to visit. She assured me that the musical version was very appropriate, that we wouldn't have to witness any of that stuff. Thus we bought tickets.

Well. In a way, Older Sister was right. Not much disturbing stuff happened onstage. At the same time, though, the entire musical was about the main character having unhealthy relationships with everyone she met. Almost every song, every line, seemed to be sexual in one way or another. Now, maybe that's an accurate representation of how it is for someone who's been sexually abused. Maybe the point is that, until the redemption at the end, all that Celie was capable of knowing was unhealthy relationships. Fine. But in my opinion, it didn't make for a very good musical. I wasn't uplifted. I didn't enjoy myself. I was just depressed.

So although the actors were amazing (Heather Headley, the original Aida, was costarring), I just didn't like it. Baby Sister didn't like it much, either. Older Sister and Little Sister really liked it, though; I guess they look for different things in their entertainment than I do.

In any case, it was a good thing we ate at Carmine's afterwards, because that totally made up for the stress and disappointments of the day. Carmine's is probably my favorite restaurant in New York City. It's like Buca di Beppo, but better. Older Sister actually got me a Carmine's cookbook for Christmas (and a pasta strainer, because how can you make Italian food without a pasta strainer?).

This time, we got to sit on one of the upper floors. We feasted on cheesy garlic bread, angel hair pasta with garlic and oil, and chicken scallopine with lemon and butter. Deeelicious. I soon became a lot happier and quite content. And score! Baby Sister was enjoying herself, too, if the fact that she was taking second helpings of everything was any indication.

Filled to the brim with good food and very sleepy, we said good-bye to Older Sister and walked back to the Manhattan at Times Square. We needed to get a good night's rest so that we could get up early the next morning to get to Older Sister's dorm before she left for work.

Things You Must Not Do or Else You're a Terrible Person

1. Forget the Alamo.

2. Say, "Disneyland isn't fun if you're an adult."

3. Change the choreography when the choreographer's not there.

4. Say, "Cartoon movies aren't as good as live-action movies."

5. Insist that the Harry Potter movies are better than the books.

6. Insist that the Lord of the Rings movies are better than the books.

7. Insist that any movies are better than the books (except for How to Train Your Dragon; How to Train Your Dragon the movie > How to Train Your Dragon the book).

8. Misquote William Shakespeare.

9. Misquote Abraham Lincoln.

10. Misquote Jim Henson.


An actual quote from Jim Henson, courtesy of ToughPigs.

11. Say you don't like sushi when you actually haven't tried sushi.

12. Say, "You're an adult. You don't need anything for your birthday!"

13. Say, "You're an adult. You don't need anything for Christmas!"

And, my personal not-favorite, 14. Say, "You know what would be fun right now? If we talked about politics!"

Much Ado About Siblings

This month, a million things happened in the space of two short weeks. These things are as follows: Older Sister went to Washington, D.C., for a grad school trip. Little Sister went to San Francisco for a college class, and the three youngest each starred in a different theatrical production.

Baby Sister was in Much Ado About Nothing. Much Ado About Nothing is my favorite Shakespeare play. When Baby Sister was first cast as Hero in her school's production of this delightful comedy, I offered her the use of my No Fear Shakespeare version of the script.

BABY SISTER: ...you have that?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: ...is that weird?

I was able to see Baby Sister perform twice. She was a delightful Hero (you should have seen her faint!). She was also very short, as usual, which was good because the other characters in the play several times refer to Hero's height or lack thereof. Our mom made the costumes for the production, and those were also very good.

Watching Shakespeare always causes me to talk with an Elizabethan bent for a while--inside my head, if not out loud. The second time I saw the show, I went to an Indian restaurant with my roommates right after.

WAITER: Here's your table.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Behold! Here is a place upon which we can eat.

Little Brother's leading role that same week was Pinocchio in Shrek Jr. Little Brother usually gets cast as fairly serious characters, so I felt like he really enjoyed the chance to use a wacky voice and be funny. He also got to puppeteer a chicken in some scenes, which he also really enjoyed. Little Brother is a talented self-taught puppeteer.

Here's his program bio. It amused me:

Little Brother Obnoxious was last seen onstage as John Darling in Hometown High School's summer production of Peter Pan. Some other shows he was recently in are The Little Mermaid and Bye Bye Birdie. Little Brother is puppeteer and immensely enjoys making/watching YouTube videos and eating sushi. He would like to thank everyone who put time and effort into this musical. The end.

The next week, we all saw Baby Brother as Daddy Warbucks in Annie Kids. Ginger Cousin was Annie. Ginger Cousin is now taller than Baby Brother, so that was pretty funny. But holy cow. Nobody knew that Baby Brother could sing like that. He has the voice of an angel.

And to top it all off, Older Sister was accepted for a summer internship in New York City. She's really going to move there, just like she's always dreamed of!

A while ago, I was talking to Goldfinger. He said something like, "No offense, but your family does so much stuff that it's really...intimidating."

I'm beginning to see what he meant.

It's All In the Cards

Hi everybody!

Y'all know my obsession with February 3rd. Well, once again, not a lot happened on this year's February 3rd, but I'm hopeful for next year.

Tonight I was looking for a comedic monologue I wrote in high school. Baby Sister wants to use it for an audition, but due to a mishap with the family computer there are no digital copies of it in existence. I have only one print copy, but I'm not sure where it is. So I pulled out my boxes of special things and started looking.

I started keeping a box of special things when I was, oh, maybe four years old. Since my love language is gifts, stuff is important to me, and some stuff I've kept practically my whole life. Inside are pictures from the program when I saw Toy Story on Ice eighteen or nineteen years ago, some notes Viola and I wrote during Anne of Green Gables, letters that Best Friend Boy sent me on his mission, a picture that Shutterbug once drew for me during class, my high school and college graduation announcements, minutes from Relief Society presidency meetings, and these Phineas and Ferb cards, among other things.

Yes, the one on the right does say "nephew" on it. Little Sister gave it to me for my birthday last year. Inside, it begins, "Thanks for being the best nephew I could have ever asked for!!!! You have exceeded my expectations of you." 

Digging a little deeper, I found more store bought cards from various loved ones, but I also found a ton of homemade cards. I found at least one homemade birthday card from each of my younger siblings. There was a hand-drawn Phineas and Ferb card from Baby Brother. A card from Little Sister with a drawing of a birthday cake on it that was probably from when we were both in elementary school. A card from Baby Sister cut in the shape of a dragon egg, from the year that the two of us were into this site where we could hatch virtual dragons. A card made by the notoriously grumpy Little Brother that says, "You are my sunshine!"

And these cards reminded me of something that I sometimes forget. Which is to say, life is hard and it's not fun fifty-two percent of the time. But regardless of those facts, I'm pretty lucky.

Caroll Spinney: The Man, The Myth, The Legend

For Christmas, Little Sister and Baby Sister got tickets for Little Brother and me to a live showing of I Am Big Bird, followed by a question-and-answer session with Caroll Spinney. Caroll Spinney, for all you non-Muppet people, is the original performer of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch.

Now, there are Muppet fans crazier than me. I know of some people who are so obsessed with Muppets that they would spend their life savings on a clipping from Jim Henson's ficus plant. Not that Jim Henson had a ficus plant. That I know of.

Anyways, I'm not as into Muppets as some people. But they do have a special place in my heart and life. Muppet Treasure Island is my second-favorite movie; MuppetVision 3-D is one of my favorite non-roller coaster attractions at Disneyland and Disney World; I have my share of Muppet merchandise. This love of Muppets has led me to want to know more about the amazing men who perform them. So getting to see Caroll Spinney, the man behind characters that have been beloved to me since I was a kid? Priceless. A great gift. Little Brother and I were very excited.

Yesterday, January 29th, was the long-awaited day. The night before, I kind of freaking out. Getting from my workplace to Kingsbury Hall before the performance started was going to be pretty stressful, even if everything went as planned. But if things didn't go as planned...well, let's just say I filled my purse with all kinds of things. My glasses, in case one of my contacts ripped or was irritating my eye. My phone charger, in case my phone died. A piece of paper with the addresses of Kingsbury Hall and the parking lot, in case my phone navigation went crazy like it did at Viola's wedding. Nothing would come between us and Caroll Spinney. No, nothing.

Except bad snow. Or if my car had another problem. I couldn't prepare for those things except to pray that they wouldn't happen. By the time we were supposed to go, I was really stressed out.

Stressfully, I drove Little Brother and myself to get sushi at the Happy Sumo. Stressfully, I paid for the sushi. Stressfully, I drove us out of the parking garage. And stressfully, I dropped my parking garage ticket under my seat.

I almost had a heart attack and died, right there in the parking garage. But I managed to recover the ticket and remain alive. Until I couldn't find the parking garage exit and almost had another heart attack. And so on and so forth. With lots of incidents of almost-cardiac arrest, we inched through the dark, rainy streets of Salt Lake City until we reached Kingsbury Hall.

By the time we got there, I was so stressed out, I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to enjoy myself. But despite my misgivings, I parked Bernard in a parking space where we were joined by a lime-green car with a Kermit the Frog sticker in the window. I suspected the driver of this car was the kind of diehard Muppet fan I was describing earlier. There was probably a clipping of Jim Henson's ficus plant in the front seat.

We picked our tickets up from will call, went into the theatre, and sat down. And so the evening commenced.

First, there was the showing of the movie. It was a beautiful movie. Caroll Spinney is also a sort of artist-animator-cartoonist, and it looked like that either he had animated segments of the movie or someone else had animated them after his style. So it was a neat combination of home video, footage of Muppet productions, interviews, and animations of stories from Caroll's past.

My only complaint about the movie...well, I love Steve Whitmire. He is my favorite Muppeteer. Caroll Spinney actually discovered him. So at the portion of the movie when Jim Henson died and Steve Whitmire was chosen to play Kermit the Frog, Caroll started talking about Steve. I was excited because I thought I might hear some cool Steve stories. Caroll Spinney said something like, "He was a talented young puppeteer." Then they showed a clip of Steve Whitmire waving at the camera on a Muppet set or something. Aaaand that was the end of the Steve Whitmire portion of the movie. Boo.

But anyways, great movie. I laughed a lot and cried a lot and even coughed a lot after choking on my own tears. By the end of it, my stress had almost completely melted away. Although I already knew a lot of the things they mentioned in the movie, I learned a lot I'd never heard before. Also, in the words of Little Brother, "Caroll Spinney and his wife are the cutest couple ever!"

The movie ended. Everybody applauded. And then from the back of the theatre, Caroll Spinney and his wife Debra began to walk down the aisle, and everybody leapt to their feet and applauded some more.

"That was so weird!" Little Brother said during the brief intermission between the movie and the question-and-answer. "We just saw them on the screen, and then they were in the theatre!"

"Like MuppetVision 3D," I suggested.

"Caroll Spinney 3D."

Around us, everybody was chatting excitedly about the movie. I saw people raising their hands in the air and opening and closing their fingers in an imitation of the way Caroll puppeteered Big Bird, marveling at the skill and talent it takes to make a Muppet come to life. I knew that's what they were doing because I've often done it myself. The Muppeteers are among some of the greatest actors in the world. They not only do amazing acting, but they do it through a body that doesn't even belong to them. Acting is hard enough without going through an additional medium!

Then it was time for the Q&A. The mediator (who was some guy from KUED named Ken Verdoia who is probably famous but whom I don't care about) invited those of us with the not-so-good seats in the back to move closer, which we did with pleasure. Then Caroll and Debra came out, and everybody stood and applauded again. We would have stood and applauded for Caroll Spinney all day because Caroll Spinney.

So, they all sat down onstage. Debra Spinney had a gigantic purse, like maybe she had a phone charger and her extra glasses in there. But the gigantic purse was quickly forgotten as Ken Verdoia (whoever he is) started asking questions.

First, he asked a broad, sweeping question about Caroll Spinney's career.

Now, the movie talked about how Caroll met Jim Henson and ended up working for him. Caroll was performing at a puppetry festival in Salt Lake City. His act was a disaster, but Jim, who was watching, thought he handled it well, so he offered Caroll a job working on Sesame Street.

This was one of the animated portions of the movie. While we were watching it, I noticed that the animation of the theatre looked like Kingsbury Hall, right down to the murals on the wall. But my suspicions weren't confirmed until during the Q&A when Caroll said something like, "Well, the story begins here." He said that the performance had happened in Kingsbury Hall. "Jim was sitting right over there." He pointed.

And then I almost had a heart attack again because Jim Henson, one of my heroes, had been in this building! Wow!!!

I studied Caroll as he talked. He was wearing a green pants, a brown shirt, and a tan jacket. As for the rest of him...I don't have a picture, but this random picture from the Internet suffices.

I think that's even the same jacket!

He's about the same age as my grandmother, and he had the same tendency to start telling a story in the middle of another story. But never mind that; the audience ate up everything he said. He would occasionally go into Big Bird's voice as he talked, and the audience just couldn't get enough of that. There was more applause every time. Also, he had a very little-kiddish air about him. He talked about Snuffy as if he were real; he talked about all the puppets as if they were real. Which, you know, they are to so many people. But he had no self-consciousness about it whatsoever.

Ken Verdoia also took questions from the audience. There were two little kids who had brought puppets who asked questions. At their age, I probably would have asked dumb questions, or used my puppet to ask the questions. But these kids were way smarter than I was. One asked if Caroll had any advice for young puppeteers.

Caroll gave a pragmatic answer. Then Ken Verdoia started rambling on, saying something like, "Hold onto your dream...people will tell you you're crazy...and then when you become a puppeteer, hold onto something special..."

And I was like, "What are you talking about, Ken Verdoia? Nobody wants your advice. Nobody's even here to see you!" But then I realized he was trying to work up a bit of an intro segue thing, because out of Debra Spinney's gigantic purse came Oscar the Grouch!

Another random picture from the Internet.

I've heard a lot about the relationship between the Muppet and the Muppeteer, but this was my first time seeing it in action. As soon as he was out of the bag, Oscar said something grumpy. Caroll chided him, and Oscar turned around to Caroll and said, "Who are you?"

Later, somebody mentioned puppets.

OSCAR: I hate puppets!

CAROLL: He doesn't mean that.

The other little kid asked, "What makes an act funny?"

Being an improv comedian myself, I was especially interested in Caroll's response. Here's what he said: "You gain a lot from the audience. The audience is part of the show."

Anyways, Caroll and Debra shared stories with us. They talked about the work and some of the performers Caroll worked with. They answered some more questions from the audience and from Ken Verdoia. Soon, regrettably, the evening was over.

Ken Verdoia, I guess trying the whole thing altogether, was all, "That's the great thing about Big Bird. A bird teaches us how to be better people." And then Caroll and Debra left the theatre, and everybody stood up and applauded again.

So Little Brother and I left, awash in the magic of an amazing performer from an amazing tradition. We have no photos of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so the way I'm trying to preserve this amazing experience is by turning it into this story. Memories fade, but stories can be read over and over. And better yet, they can be shared. So now that you've read this, it's kind of like you, too, got to go see Caroll Spinney: the man, the myth, the legend.