The Writer Mama Riffs

In our hometown of Wilsonville, I am not widely known, except perhaps as “Mr. Katz’ wife.”

I spend most of my time behind-the-scenes being a mom and a writer. Running to the store for an occasional prop or helping to trouble-shoot during what we call “hell week” (the week before the show opens). This time hell week came right after my husband Jason’s trip out of the country for eight days to attend his brother’s wedding. 😉

The show is Grease and it’s delightful. The kids are great. They have a terrific music director at the school, Sue Schreiner, and that sure helps when you are staging a musical.

Have you ever put on a play or been in one either as an actor or behind-the-scenes? Putting on a play is an unbelievable amount of work and teachers do it, like all their “extra-curricular” jobs, on top of their day jobs as teachers. So let’s here it for teachers, moms!

I did a couple of plays with Jason, my husband, when we first met. I had no clue what I was doing but he’s a natural actor. Acting is a lot of work, producing is a lot of work, directing is an incredible amount of work…but look at what you get!

It’s so worth it. 🙂

You may have heard about the folks stuck on top of Mount Hood this past weekend. One of them was Kate Hanlon, my husband’s colleague at Wilsonville High. They both teach Sophomore English. We had some pretty bad news this past holiday season coming from Mount Hood and also with the Kim family tragedy in Southwest Oregon, so Monday was a pretty scary day. I am so grateful it’s over and that everyone is okay.

Here is a picture of Samantha at “Daddy’s school” taken at the final dress rehearsal last night. It’s one of those weeks where, if you want to see Daddy, you have to go over to school to do it. Samantha doesn’t mind. She loves to ask all the kids, “Are you one of Daddy’s students?”

She gets a huge kick out of it when they say, “Yes.”

Photo by Jerry Rousselle