Hands

When I used to live with my cousin, she would ask me to do my rendition of the Jewel song Hands in my Elmer Fudd voice. God, it used to crack us both up.

My hands are small, I know
But they're not yours, they are my own
No they're not yours, they are my own
I am never broken

Well, my hands are a freakin' mess. It's Set Up, so it's not a huge surprise, to be honest. But still, I marvel at how disgusting my hands are right now. They're cut and bruised and dirty and dry and sore and chapped and burned and even scarred. Although I haven't actually gained any new scars during this Set Up, I've acquired new scars during many previous Tear Downs and Set Ups. Most notably, during Singapore Set Up I incurred a deep cut on the outside of my left thumb (stupid Swiss Army Knife!!) that left quite a prominent mark that I can see each and every goddamned second of the day. Hopefully I'll avoid the acquisition of new scars completely during the remainder of this Set Up.

So Set Up is nearly done, and it will be none too soon. Although it's been the most enjoyable Set Up ever, it's still incredibly tiring work. My body has been sore for the past 5 days, and I always notice that it seems to hit me big-time in the shoulders. Lifting anything above my head becomes really freakin' hard after a couple of days. And trust me -- there's a lot of lifting above my head during Set Up and Tear Down. Yup, shoulders and hands are clearly the hardest hit during any Set Up and Tear Down.

And heck, if it were only dealing with the physical labour, that would be one thing. But then you also have to deal with meeting caterers and liquor licence holders, coordinating the unloading and subsequent re-organizing of 18-wheeler trucks, settling administrative matters that require your immediate attention, cleaning up accounting matters left over from your last city, working out parking details with the on-site Parking Manager, identifying potential improvements to the Premiere Party, evaluating design changes to the layout of your suite, negotiating the rental of landscaping plants, ensuring the production of accreditation passes for suppliers, determining the allocation of Premiere tickets, making decisions on where fencing will go, giving introduction speeches to different departmental teams, and training your own employees.....well, it gets a bit overwhelming.

Still, it's been great. Tomorrow and Thursday I'll get to finish putting the final touches on the suite -- putting on her fresh coat of lipstick, as it were -- and then it'll be full-steam ahead with our first 6 shows. As mentioned before, the big accomplishment is making it through to the first Sunday night. You know, I can nearly taste a Sunday night cocktail!

I just hope I have hands left to lift it with. Oh well, I can always use a straw!