It's so hard to leave you, Lafayette. Now I know where I belong...

Guess who couldn’t handle the Louisiana summer heat?! Matt’s trusty corolla, that has carried him through every puppet tour, dutifully logging nearly 300,000 miles, no longer had the stamina to face the tropical heat. After a couple of weeks of faltering, the car’s AC finally gasped its final breath. Matt has frequently told me that he’s going to drive this car until the wheels fall off. Well, the wheels were still on there, so he drove it, convinced he could finish out the summer, or at least the time in Louisiana, before getting the AC fixed.  He sweated through his shirt. He took off his pants and drove in his boxers, determined to make it. At the end of each day, he crawled in to the house like a dog looking for a place to die.

That lasted two days.

He finally broke down and brought it to the shop. Then the baby and I carted him around to his Lafayette shows, which were well received, and attended by many friends (who were obligated to laugh and clap)!

We spent the last of our days in Lafayette hanging out with people we loved and hitting up all of our favorite Acadiana food joints. We cooled down by visiting a liquid nitrogen ice cream joint, and a splash pad at Palmetto Island State Park. Here’s a fun fact: Lafayette is near the ocean, but far from the beach. Matt would always be surprised when I told him I didn’t grow up going to the beach.  “But you’re so close to the ocean,” he would say. “What do you see if you just drive south from Lafayette?” The swamp. And alligators. That’s what you’ll find at Palmetto Island State Park.

Fortunately, you’ll also find a splash pad, offering visitors a safe refuge from the heat. Because you should most definitely not jump in the swamp. When we visited, I was actually a little worried that my nephew might do just that, so I told him to be extra careful near the water, since someone had just gotten eaten by an alligator. That story wasn’t a lie, but it also wasn’t fully contextualized. I don’t feel bad. At the end of the day, no eight-year-olds had been eaten on my watch. That’s a good day in my book.

We were sad to leave the bayou, but before we did, we got to meet the newest member of my sister’s clan: *drumroll* Rhydian Niilo Constantine Gmaz-Finlay! The man with 5 names! The baby of all babies! Destined for greatness, or at least, a guaranteed job as an NPR journalist!

*cute baby photo taken by mother of the baby, Taylor Gmaz*
And now to round out the summer with a trek through Matt’s homeland – the boro of Green.

Like you give a little speed to a great white shark on shark week

Matt has enjoyed doing shows in South Louisiana. Everyday he drives to some cajun town he can barely pronounce (e.g. Opelousas, Breaux Bridge) and meets a librarian with a name like Trahan (TRAW-haw/n/) or Saucier (SO-syay) and tries to curry favor by telling them he makes a mean gumbo. If he were traveling to towns this size anywhere else in the US, his lunch options would be limited to Taco Bell, but here he feasts on muffalettas and poboys and fresh delicious coffee.

Of course, the weather here in Louisiana has been fabulous. I mean, you know what they say about summer in South Louisiana? Oh, you don't? Well, let me enlighten you. It lasts from April until October and it's two parts swampy plus one part sauna. It's not just hot, it's sticky hot. It's a heat that gets up on you. It's like you're a girl at a dance club, but instead of gross strangers dancing all over you, it's a cloud of steam. Sometimes when it rains (and it has rained every day here), steam rises off of the ground. That's how hot it is. What can I say? South Louisiana is another planet.

We took a break from the South Louisiana summer to enjoy a Sandbank Family vacation. And where else is better to vacate to than the shark infested waters of North Carolina?! That's right! There has been a terrifying uptick in Carolina shark attacks, but our beach vacay was already planned. The baby loves to swim, but she is basically a potato chip to a shark, so we had to navigate the ocean carefully. Fortunately, we only needed to venture ankle deep into the ocean before she was up to her neck in tidal waves, so we were able to give her some swimming time without giving the sharks an all-snackcess-pass.

Even without swimming, we still found plenty of ways to relax. We went for long walks on the beach, played ping pong, ate delicious meals together, and broke out the Sandbank Family Edition of Clue. PROTIP: When you're playing a game of Clue that has been personalized for your family, and you get your SECRET cards, don't look at them and remark on the nice photograph of the hall.

In the end, I declared that it was Dad in the sun room with the almond milk, though I'm still not sure what the crime was. If you asked him, he'd probably say it was paying absurd amounts of money to dilute your coffee with almond juice.

We would have loved to hit the pause button and live at the beach forever, but those puppets aren't going to puppet themselves. We headed back to South Louisiana, just in time for Matt to perform shows at the newly renovated downtown Lafayette library. This place used to be covered from floor to ceiling in shag carpet, so I'm eager to see the renovation, as well as the fervor with which the locals embrace the Sandbank Shadow Factory.

 *Amazing beach photos taken by the talented Drew Arthur.

Our strengths are found where heart and mind are bound.

Our time in Tulsa ended finally and we headed to Dallas for a brief stay in a New York Loft style hotel.  Sometimes the hotwire gods really smile upon us, and when that happens we celebrate with our “awesome hotel dance”. Putting that in quotes makes it seems like a thing—that’s because it is. We open the door of the room and throw down our suitcases

whilst simultaneously shouting “YASSSSSSSS!” Then we do our best touchdown dance while singing the name of the hotel. There are many tour rituals that we are reviving this summer.

As I’ve mentioned before, the baby isn’t exactly a road warrior, so we couldn’t get to our next destination in a single day. That meant we needed to stop somewhere, and where better than Natchitoches, Louisiana?! Natchitoches features many banners which boast that is the oldest city in Louisiana. This is technically true, if your definition of “city” is “a place with more than one stop light”. If you set the bar any higher, Natchitoches certainly does not qualify. It is a meaningful place to me because it is the location of the boarding school where I completed high school. Consequently, my glasses were tinted slightly with the color of nostalgia, and as we drove through I waxed poetic about the Texaco where I used to buy blimpie sandwiches, and Matt tried not to roll his eyes. You could call Natchitoches a small town, but Matt would probably use more choice words… like wastehole… or… a place where dreams die.

Since Natchitoches isn’t really on the way to anywhere, we rarely get a chance to visit, so I was excited to stop in and see my old friend and mentor Prem, and his wife Raj. Prem has been a residential advisor at this boarding school for nearly two decades. During my time at LSMSA in Natchitoches, he guided me with blurry metaphors, literary references that were definitely over my head, actual homemade chai tea, and delicious Nepali cuisine. Prem and Raj told us of their upcoming visit to Nepal, and showed us the ever growing green room, where Prem nurses the dying house plants of irresponsible high school students back to life. Before we left, we snapped a few pictures. As you can see, the baby is a big fan of Raj, maybe a bit skeptical of Prem.

 

On we drove, until we finally made it to Lafayette, my hometown, and more importantly, the location of our storage unit. Our clothes were overdue for washing, and the baby only had mismatching shoes left to wear, but we were finally able to take all the crap out of our cars and eat a homemade dinner. Matt began his block of Louisiana shows, and I attended one today to get this video for you. This is a UFO skit that Matt has had in the show for years, but when he performs it here in Cajun country, he adds a couple of common Cajun phrases to the skit.  You’ll hear him say “mais gah de don!” which loosely translates to “well look at that!” and “Oy-yai-yai!” which sort of means “ouch”. Apologies for the shaky cam. It’s not super easy to handle a toddler and video a puppet show!

They say that the road ain't no place to start a family.

Part of the reason the blog has been in hiatus for 3 summers is that I was in school, and it was not the kind of school that features a summer break. But during that time we also had a baby, and she isn't particularly good company on long drives. We've been able to join Matt for the puppet tour this time around because the summer features a lot of block bookings, long stretches in a single city, and short driving distances between locations. That means we can spend the summer together as a family, but it also means we end up spending 10 days in a place like Tulsa.

Tulsa isn't usually the first city that comes to mind when I think of cities where I'd like to wile away the summer. It is more likely to be conjured up when I'm trying to recall places that are flat or places that use the grid system. As one librarian put it, "the city has no pulse," but the library system is incredible. They have something like a million library branches and they hire Matt every year, so Tulsa it is.

So what do you do when you're spending 10 days in Tulsa with a baby? First, you book the hotel with the indoor water park so that you can take her "winning" in her "baby suit" every day. Ignore the heavy smell of chlorine that fills your lungs even hours later, and pretend it is totally fun to wade in an ankle-deep pool for an hour.

 

Second, make a list of all of the local museums and attractions and visit them one by one. Quiet museums filled with priceless art may be a poor choice for a loud baby that likes to touch things, but museum gardens can be a great place for a baby to wander aimlessly blabbering about flowers and tire herself out.

 

Tulsa also has an incredible aquarium, which features many obscure and large fish. Try to hide the fear in your voice when you walk through a dark tunnel and watch sharks swim overhead. While some might argue it is appropriate for the baby to learn that sharks are dangerous, you will have to leave the aquarium if she starts crying because her parents can't keep it together.

 

Finally, tie that baby into the car seat, head to the nearest drive-in movie theater, and pray she falls asleep before sundown. This is hit or miss and you may end up paying $14 to completely miss Jurassic World because your baby is most definitely not sleeping, but if you keep trying you might catch the latest pixar flick.

Ready to see Jurassic World, unaware that we would see exactly none of it.

Hoping to see Inside Out and prove to ourselves that we are capable of "crushing it" parent-wise.

Tune in next week for a blog that might actually feature puppets!

You're the only ten I see.

And we’re back! After a 3-summer-blog hiatus, Paige and Matt’s excellent adventure has resumed! The band is back together for Matt’s 7^th puppet touring summer. Seven! You know what that means? That means seven summers of people asking him what his real job is!

The tour bus has expanded a bit this year. In addition to our dog, Emma, who came along for the third summer tour, we now have our human child, Apolline. Additionally, this tour coincides with the world’s slowest cross country move, so the tour bus also features many boxes of our belongings, which we are taking to our new home in Texas. And when I say tour bus, I mean both of our old-ass beat up corollas. Basically, we’re like one big sad caravan, rolling around the nation, with our little cute things doing very little to contribute to their survival, and our tired selves carrying all of their crap.

The tour kicked off with a trip to Knoxville. Matt did some shows in East Tennessee and we had a chance to hit up some putt-putt, which obviously offered multiple opportunities for the baby to be cute.

Then we swung back through Nashville for one short night to goodbye for good to the place that has been home for so long. We took one last walk around the block, and got a surprisingly heartfelt goodbye from the mailman. Even the cat that has ignored us for five years came by for a farewell pet. Before we rolled away, we took a family picture in front of the house we were leaving, because memories. Goodbye little house – you were the place where we got married, started our family, and hosted so many wonderful Sunday dinners. You had creaky floors, a broken stove, and a lumpy front yard, but you were home to us.

I admit I was pretty sad as we caravanned away from Nashville, but it was time to seize the summer, so I fixed my face and drove to Memphis. We spent a relaxing night by the pool and headed on to Walmartland (Bentonville, Arkansas) for a few days of shows.

This is the seventh puppet tour, and the seventh year that Matt’s been booked in Northwest Arkansas, so we visited all our favorite old haunts, and all our favorite Arkansans – my dad and his wife, and Fayetteville friends Margot and Jordan, who happen to own a lot of stuffed pandas. The baby was quite enamored with the pandas, though she kept calling them bananas. What do you do? English is hard.

We move on westward!

Video killed the radio star.

I'd been holding off on posting this because I was checking to make sure everyone was okay with some clips of their children in the video, but it looks like nobody minds it. Then I got so busy prettifying my new office, and... you know how it goes.

Puppet Tour 2011 is all over, and we finished it by visiting with the Sandbank family. After watching her siblings get married in a matter of months, Leah Drew finally succumbed to peer pressure and got a boyfriend. Not only does he think Leah Drew is sweet (no small wonder), he brought an adorable puppy to win our affection. Hey, our love was for sale and he was buying.

There were the usual Sandbank family movie nights, several games of dammit, delicious culinary creations from Matt's mom, Mary Ellen (previously referred to on this blog as Mdawg), and even some trips to new places. Like Mdawg said, it should be a crime not to get together for six whole months.Now that it's all over, I present for your viewing pleasure, the summer video.

My job is so small town.

Sometimes I just have nothing to say about the places we visit. After a while, small towns start to blend together. I'm not talking about the nice little towns with culture and identity. I'm talking about the small towns that have nothing but a dollar general and a bad Chinese restaurant.

To entertain ourselves, Matt and I started a competition to see who could randomly sprinkle their conversations with a bizarre fortune he got at one of the bad Chinese restaurants. You get points for frequency of use, and extra points for style and inanity. Here's an example:

Mdawg: Matthew, do you want an omelet?
Matt: Is even the greatest of whales helpless in the middle of the desert?
Mdawg: Is that a yes or a no?

Here's a small town story. One library, which shall remain nameless, was papered with signs advertising a show, by Mother Goose Theater. Normally, I would let this slide, but here's why it's a blog-mentioning error. 1) This is the third year in a row that we've been there. 2) The sign was adorned with a picture from Matt's website. At some point, the person making the flier had to go to www.wildgoosechasetheater.com, and stare at a banner that says Wild Goose Chase Theater, whilst grabbing the photo. I guess it says something that in the three years we've been to this place, I've gotten zero pictures there.

Now we're in Greensboro, where Matt is performing his final shows of the summer. We're staying with Matt's family, which comprises the blog readership almost entirely. So on the next blog, I'll have an especially fun time writing about them. It's like talking about someone behind their back and to their face at the same time! So meta!

The shows in Greensboro have been received pretty well. I can usually hear a fair amount of laughter, most of it coming from Matt's mother, who has been to all 5 of his shows here. Yesterday, while we were setting up, a kid approached us wearing a tshirt that read "I'm kind of a big deal." As soon as we informed him there would be a puppet show, he enthusiastically said, "I love puppet shows! I've never seen one before. Can I be the star?" Immediately after the show, he followed this by insisting that Matt teach him to make shadow puppets on Wednesday and Friday afternoons.












Kids say the darnedest things.