Circus

The circus was in town, and Laurie took us all to the show. Jill really enjoyed it. Whenever she is asked, she comments on the clowns. Apparently they made a big impression on her.

I have been trying to think what my favorite part was, but it is really hard to narrow that down. The tigers were beautiful. The elephants were cool. The tight-rope walkers were insane. The . . . silk acrobats (what are they called?) were breathtaking and scary.

There was one act—I have no idea how to describe it—there were two round, open cages on their sides, attached to long weighted metal poles, so they could spin around in circles. (This description is horrible!) And the circles swung around, like a ferris wheel. They went really high up in the air like a ferris wheel, too. And there was a man inside each one. They did crazy stuff inside, and then they jumped out and got ON TOP of the circle. Every now and then it looked like one was going to fall, but I don't know whether they really were or if that was part of the clown dramatics of the evening.

I'm sorry about how horrible my description is. I can't even picture it from what I just wrote. But know that it was crazy.

At one point, there were two men juggling. I was impressed. Then they started juggling back and forth with each other. I was impressed. Then they juggled back and forth, back-to-back with each other, so they couldn't even see where the next object would be coming from. I was very impressed. Then they juggled back and forth, back-to-back while the objects they were juggling WERE ON FIRE. I needed a different word than "impressed" to express how I felt.

It was just amazing. I wondered how long the circus performers had been training at their arts. A lot of them were foreign (at least that I saw up close). Before the show, you were allowed to walk down on the floor and get really close to different acts, and the performers had name tags with their names and countries on them.

The man on stilts was insane, crazy, impressive. I need new words! I couldn't keep my eyes off of him. It was just unreal that he could be walking like that.

And then they lit a man on fire, completely on fire, and rocketed him into the sky out of a huge crossbow. I couldn't help but wonder how that becomes your job. When do you decide that is what you want to do?

I wish I had taken more pictures of the action. I hope Laurie did.

I don't know why, because I knew the venue beforehand, but I still expected a large grassy dirt area with tents all over the place and one huge tent. I just read on the internet that the circus has been using existing venues in lieu of the huge tents since the fifties, so there is no reason for me to think of that when I think of the circus.

Even though it was really nice to have concessions and restrooms and padded seats and heating/air conditioning, I still sort of missed the big tent.

In other news, Danny's walking has really taken off. He's walking the majority of the time now. It's fabulous. And the forecast for the next five days has the weather always in the 60s and 70s, so I'm pretty excited about this week.

I hope you have a great week and that you had a great weekend!