Suburbs of Our Discontent

I spent the weekend packing up my house, kids, pets, and husband and hauling us all up to Vermont for the summer. (Yes, I've just revealed that my house is empty. You want my 500 pound television from the late '90s? Be my guest. Okay, scratch that, PEOPLE ARE WATCHING MY HOUSE. But you can still take the TV if you manage to break in. P.S. All my jewelry is fake.)

Now that we're settled in, I can see why it's worth the hassle of figuring out how to keep a Betta fish alive in a temporary container, confronting the detritus of my domestic chaos, and clearing out the things that are rotten in the state of my fridge. But I don't think I could do it repeatedly in a season like those traveling players did in Shakespeare's time.

Although, come to think of it, Shakespeare left his wife and kids behind when he went on the road.

That's it! I've discovered why it is women didn't perform on the early modern stage. It's not that they weren't allowed, it's that they weren't idiots. They knew they'd have to haul all that crap around, along with their kids.

Check it out. I just shifted a paradigm.