Last one laughing, laughs the longest

Back from the long weekend at the Nerd Parade - had some random fragments floating around in my brain.

It's now the end of summer everywhere you look, now that the weather has cooled and the kids are heading back to school all over the place.
This always leads to some kind of reflection on the season - usually on the Festival season for me.  We're not even half done with the show but the holiday weekend is always the big hurdle to clear, as it pushes us about as far as we can go, squeezes out all the weird that it can and sends us all home completely wiped out.  Mine was a blast....and yes, I'm sore, nursing a slight limp and trying to take it easy on the voice.  But man, it was fun.

My boys came out and performed with me on Saturday - that is always a giant treat for me and also something I worry about.
I think my wife thinks that I hesitate to bring them because they'll intrude on my fun or something like that, but really I love having them there and watching how they react to this weird place where you can mess with strangers, sit down in the middle of the street and eat with your hands and strangers will come up and hand you money that it's ok to accept.  They have a great time in front of the audience and are actually surprisingly adept at picking up on bits, remembering to face the audience and seem to be fairly natural performers - I couldn't be more proud - and this year they were old enough to get that we weren't at the Festival for fun and I didn't have to keep explaining that going to see shows and ride elephants wasn't the primary focus of the day.
They were amazing all around.

My hesitation to bring them out is more out of a sense of self-preservation.

What I do out there is random, silly, ridiculous fun but it is also incredibly taxing and I usually don't have much, if anything, left at the end of the day.
Asking if I can add in being a good dad, making sure they always know where I am in the crowd (and vice versa), keeping an eye on the kids' needs, making sure they are ok with everything that is going on and leaving some energy and attention for my boys at the end of the day is a tough one.
I don't worry the kids wouldn't get taken care of - I worry that I would finally just clown myself right into the ground. But I do look forward to doing the show with them, it's a special dad-only thing and I'm glad they want to share it with me for now.  As it happened, they clowned themselves to pieces on Saturday and spent the night in the tent in an exhausted but happy little coma and were more than ready to go home on Sunday when Mom appeared to bring them back to the world of normal kids.

George's kids also went home on Sunday - the kids all need to rest up for school, after all
That left us both suddenly free of the normal structure of checking in with/on children and both of us were pretty loopy and tired by Monday so the shows were pretty odd, even for us.  But still, it was a blast.  I don't want to make the long weekend sound like it's all torture, sometimes it's more laughs than anyone can comfortably take in one sitting.  Sometimes there are moments of total inspiration, sometimes it's just plain amazing to see what people can do, even when they're pretty sure they don't have the energy to do anything more.

I'm excited for the remaining weekends.
Even though I dread the feeling of the Festival coming quickly to an end, I also know that if I'm doing what I do correctly I will be ready for it to be over when the final show comes to a close.  I'm may be a little slow today, maybe more sore than normal and I might make some painful sounding pops and creaks when I stand up but I'm not ready to be done yet.

This is just the break time to catch my breath, ice my injuries and collect my thoughts - see you in the dust.