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!