All the world's a stage and I've got three understudies for the role of dictator

Yes, my loyal readers I do have three little dictators and their names are Maggie, Abby and Nikki-- and yesterday was no different from every other day of my life.

I went into Maggie's room at 6:30 a.m. so I could be assured she was up by 7:30 a.m. She's not a morning person. Perhaps she'd be more of a morning person if she wasn't a "nightlight all night" kind of sneaky reader. She reads to the cat, to her dolls and in her head-- and she thinks I'm clueless. Well, I'm not. I can sympathize. I too would be a nightlight reader if the slightest move didn't send the other two dictators running down the hall into my room. I swear they have Momdar.

Anyway, I really don't have a point to this post. I'm just trying to get back in the swing of things. And swing I am from one task to the next-- typical mommy stuff.

The real news out of this household is that I may finally get to resume my amateur local theater acting "career." You see, since I write a local column, people assume I can act, draw, sing and think of clever advertising slogans. Strangely nobody ever asks me to do their taxes or help them with their trigonometry homework. No but if the school needs a sign or a face painter -- who are they going to call-- you got it -- me. Am I good? I'm dreadful. Butterflies look like rabid spiders and flowers look like trees in autumn, but hey I do it with a lot of heart and the kids probably feel pretty good about their artistic abilities after I'm done with them.

I do love the theater, or at least I did-- after 10 years away from the stage, who knows? Being on stage could be the equivalent to being stuck in a room with Fear Factor competitors.

I had given up on the stage. I'm a mom first, right? Nobody else is here to watch my kiddies. this was all until yesterday. There I sat bored out of my mind at our editorial meeting when the director for our town's annual melodrama asked me to audition.

"The only way you'll get me there is if you cast my kids," I said. "Sorry Len but I can't have feral children running around the neighborhood."
"Ok," he said.
"Excuse me, you do realize they are 3, 5 and 8," I said.
"Yeah, bring them and we'll see what we can do," he said.

And so last night I prepped my kids for the big audition. I decided there was no way I could teach them a monologue in one day with all the homework they had, so I decided they'd do a montage of nursery rhymes and sing lullabyes. I know it's tacky, but really they are just kids and I was out of time. Besides I doubt he is going to give them speaking lines.

Personally, I think he is out of his mind. Maggie the eldest would be great (although she did throw up on stage during a play in the first grade). Abby is shy or at least I think she is a shy one. Her preschool teacher said she'd be great, so who knows? She sure was a ham practicing Humpty Dumpty-- and she can sing. I have no idea where those genes came from, but the kid can sing. As for Nikki-- dear little Nikki-- while she is adorable, she is only three and if I were a director, I wouldn't let those big blue eyes and dimples fool me into casting her. She's a kid and she's going to behave like one-- and if you want her to talk, you're going to need an interpreter. if you want her to sing, you're going to need subtitles and either good set of earplugs or a stage wired with some serious sound because the kid has no middle ground. She either shouts or she whispers when she sings, but either way you can only understand every third word-- because she's three.

Anyway, I'll let you all know how it goes. I'm off to dig up a short monologue.