The Great Ivy + Bean Tour, Week Eight: Connecticut and... well, just Connecticut.

Week eight was probably the slowest and weirdest week of tour to date, because all of the tour work happened within forty-eight hours. Neverless, it was part of tour, so it must be blogged!

It was great not having to worry about a suitcase since we were only going to be gone one night, but we still had to be up super early, and I hate waking up early. I'd like to think that I would be used to it by now, having performed two-show days all before 11am, but I still really really really hate waking up early. It's dark, my voice almost always starts out sounding like a truck driver, and the bags under my eyes are heinous. Yep, shockingly evil. That's the definition of heinous.

You can imagine the look of horror on the other passengers faces as I hopped on the subway at 5:45 in the morning with my baggy eyes and grumpy cat face. We were meeting at 6:30 in the morning to start our drive to Connecticut.

Lucky for us (sarcasm), we can never park our trailer Rhonda with the van in Manhattan or Queens. Because that would just be too damned easy, reader. So we have to take an extra two hours to drive upstate to Beacon, NY, where we keep Rhonda, every time we drive into the city. It's lame.

And the roads are the lamest.

I attempted to sleep while the Dylan attempted to dodge the human-size potholes in the road. It didn't work. I was tired, cranky from all the bumps, and really not excited about performing that afternoon. Nevertheless, we arrived at the Quick Center around ten in the morning to load in and prepare for our show at three that afternoon.

The Quick Center in Fairfield, Connecticut

Besides feeling the sleep deprivation, I started to panic a bit. The last time we had at least a week off from touring and performing, my body had no clue what to do and the show wasn't anywhere near as clean or polished as it should be. And now, on top of having a week off, I was running on maybe six hours of sleep. You could say I was a little worried.

Much to my surprise, the show was pretty great. We had a fantastic house of kids and parents, and I found some things in the show that I hadn't done before that worked, which got me all excited to try them again the next day for the school performance. The day is starting to turn around!

After a quick shower at our hotel, we headed about an hour away to Durham, Connecticut for dinner. We were going to Emily's childhood home to spend the evening with her parents.

Horray for rents and more home-cooked food!

First of all, can we talk about how cool parents are? Seriously. Especially after knowing these guys for almost six months, getting to meet family members outside of a theater lobby environment is so frickin cool. Emily's parents, Marv and Jen, were gracious, kind, and hilarious. We loved hearing them tell stories about Emily, and they loved hearing our stories of the tour. We drank wine and ate lasagna (seems to be the dinner meal to prepare amongst the Ivy + Bean parents) and chicken as well as home made pumpkin pie with cream cheese frosting, chocolate chip brownies and cookies. Before saying goodbye, they packed up a giant box filled with plates of dinner and goodies so we had plenty to nibble on for the van ride back to the city the following day.

Another wonderful evening of full bellies and full hearts. And scoping out embarassing family photos.

It was super easy getting to bed that night. However, the whole waking up early thing was not so great. The air was very dry, so I woke up to a voice that was worse than truck driver; I'd call it super scary truck driver.

On top of that, IT. WAS. SNOWING. Geeeeeeeez weather, CUT IT OUT I'M DONE WITH IT!

After chugging a few gallons of water and tea, super scary truck driver was gone and Ivy had arrived. Our morning performance went well, and we loaded out in good time to make it to the city before the sun went down. The bumps were still all over the crappy interstate, but all things were made better by the leftovers from Emily's house the night before.

I took a whole plate of cake home. It didn't last twenty four hours.

Tune in for next week, when the crew heads to west coast!

(yeah I know I said that in the last blog but I forgot about this one because I was so behind so sorry for the confusion and for real we are on the west coast next time.)