The kids were off to school, crazed about Halloween (Jaden: “Is it today?” Me: “No.” Jaden: “Is it the weekend?” Me: “No, it’s Monday.”)

In the couple minutes before my first work call I was trying to find the floor of their rooms, beneath stuffies, toys, and discarded clothes.

Several feet of papers, games and crafts stood between me and the worksurface on Shayla’s desk. I was doing my hasty, guilty triage of artwork. What is timeless and needs to be kept? What can be, um, well, you know. OK I’ll say it, what can be trashed? It feels capricious, even vicious, to curate her considerable art output by stuffing much of it into secret bags for the recycling bin. But all life in this house will be smothered in paper within six months if I don’t do it.

I was startled to come on a sign in sheet for one of the kids’ shows. Wow, when was the last one of these? Has the era of the Sign In Performance ended without me even noticing? I hope not.

For those not familiar with current performance formats, this type of show requires your name, and sometimes a great deal more information, be written on a sheet at the door to attend. The show would probably be more interesting if so much effort had not been put into creating the sign in sheet. No doubt inspired by reading logs (I despise reading logs, don’t get me started) and the school sign-out, there is utter solemnity around correctly using this form.

The show is then improvised, usually with a “you go first” “no you go first,” and almost always contains a wrestling segment, a funny walk/fall down from Jaden, and a finale rendition of Frozen or some Taylor Swift song. If we have had our last Sign In Performance, I’ll be really sad to see them go.