persephone33

♛I've been working at theatre camp all week. These are some of the most talented students I've ever had the pleasure of working with. Also, they're some of the most uninhibited; I think that's part of what makes an actor great, letting go of what everyone else thinks and just being. Yesterday I got to coach scenes and monologues, one of my very favorite things in the world to do. The kiddos did a flash mob (to Fleetwood Mac!) at our largest grocery store in town today to promote their show this week, and it was super cool. So fun.

♛The chubbiness is getting out of control, and I feel there might be a direct correlation between that and the volume of food I'm putting in my mouth. I haven't even stepped on the scale in over a month. I'm afraid the poor thing might die of shock. Or strain. Or both.

♛I lost the Jeep a few days ago. I went to the mall to use my card for a free Victoria's Secret panty (like you do) and when I got back out to the parking lot, NO JEEP. The Jeep is no frills - no panic button, no remote entry, no power windows or anything else. I was upset - not because we don't have insurance, but because I was going to have to tell Mr. H. that the car was stolen on MY watch. I walked around in the boiling Texas heat for twenty minutes before I remembered I entered through a different door than I normally do. WHAT. AN. IDIOT.

♛My back has been killing me for months. Since March? I've been going to the chiropractor, and I thought it was getting better, but I woke up this morning to the same level of pain I started with. It's just frustrating. Annoying. Getting old is roughly on par with chewing up broken glass. It, simply put, sucks out loud.

♛The week without kiddos was relaxing, I'm not going to lie. It's fun to not have to be responsible for anyone else but me. Oh, and Nolan a little. But he's fairly self-sufficient. However, I'm glad to have those little goobers back in the nest. We were incomplete while they were away.

♛I'm gearing up to work another week of camp - I get to direct 'Baby it's Cold Outside' and 'Sing' from A Chorus Line, comedies both. :D Very fun. And I'm making a costume plot for La Cage... anyone want to place a bet that there's over a hundred separate costumes? Eeeek. :)

Her name is Christine, and she lives in my mother's GPS.

The name Christine is a nod to Mr, King, of course.

(My name is not, FYI.)

Seriously, though, I've driven all over the Metroplex this week. I went to Dallas to see David, Ft. Worth to see Kristi and Sally, Hurst to see Deadra, and Irving to see Cherie and Rachel. These folks run the gamut of pals from my very oldest friend that I've known since we were three, to a former student of mine that just graduated with her theatre degree.

But to go all these places and not succumb to my truly hopeless sense of direction (Nolan says that I can't find my butt with two hands and a flashlight), my mother leant me her GPS.

I've learned that a GPS is a truly helpful thing. It's a bit unnerving, though, the first time you hear the placid, disembodied voice telling you, "In 1.8 miles, turn left." It gives you sort of a big brother vibe, all rolled up with the creepiness of the book about the 1958 Plymouth Fury come to life.

And even though she's truly a help, there's always room for operator error. If the girl said, "Recalculating," once, she said it four hundred times. I evidently don't follow directions very well. She got huffy a few times, and I swear I heard her roll her eyes more than once, but for the most part, she's a lot like me. She repeats herself ( a lot) when she doesn't get a response, gets a little irritated when things don't go her way, and shuts up when things are good.

I like her. I don't need one, given that I can drive anywhere I need to in my hometown in less than 20 minutes. But if I lived here, I sure would. I'd even have one built into the car, maybe.

As long as it wasn't a Fury.

★ I have a day ahead of doctor visits. I like these particular doctors as people, but still. I'd rather be tied up, gagged and dragged behind a truck on a gravel road than go.

★ Oh, barista at the coffee shop, do not pretend you don't know what "medium" means. Every one of those shops calls it something different, and I'm not bending to their collective wills. MEDIUM. Do not look at me with a confused puppy face. You can figure this out on your own. Try harder.

★ It's Thursday, and really my favorite day of the week. Even after 8 years of teaching for the ALT Academy and fifteen years (WOAH. I've been teaching for fifteen years? When did that happen?) of teaching adolescents, I still really, really love it. It's the highlight of the week, most times. They're talented and funny and WANT to be there, which is indeed the most important thing. And they're not worried about making utter fools of themselves, which is KEY for theatre. Thursday also means Bones, and thus David Boreanaz. Yet another perk. :D

★ I locked myself out of the house before eight o'clock this morning. I got back in because I am a ninja. That's a picture for you, right? Me scaling the back porch ceiling and dropping through a window? We'll just say that's what I did to get back in.

★ Rehearsals are better. Still not fantastic, but better. I left smiling instead of crying last night, so I'm hopeful for the rest of the week.

★ I made these for home group last night. They were a hit! And cute, which is really why I wanted to make them in the first place.

( Easy cookie recipe... )

★ There's a quote (a Chinese proverb, maybe?) that I've had on my theatre folder for years. "Tell me what you love, and I'll tell you who you are." What do you love? Think about it. It's all deep and stuff.

I bring you a post with a story, this morning.

I've shared what I call 'cute kid stories' with you over the years; I think they're cute, anyway. You people might think they're moronic and I'm wasting my computer's battery relaying it - but whatever. Here's another.

( Puff something. I KNOW it's Puff Something! )

In the interest of being all scientifical, I entered in a few different samples to the "I write like" website. For my current WIP piece of fluffy fanfiction, I got J.K.Rowling. Well enough, I thought, I am trying to emulate her style, there.

For my novel and three other original short stories, I got David F. Wallace. *points up* I have to admit, I googled him. If the website is going to say I write like the dude, I want to know who he is. His best known novel is a mix of hysterical realism, satire and comedy, so I think that pretty much hits it on the nose for me, generally speaking.

HOWEVER, when I put in the last thing I wrote for church - a piece on the Song of Solomon, Mr. Website spat out Chuck Palahniuk. Chuck Palahniuk, author of 'Fight Club.'

Song of Solomon, Fight Club. Song of Solomon, Fight Club. I thought about it for a looooong time (almost 45 seconds!) and I don't see it. Sorry.

And crap, I talked about Fight Club, so.... *looks around for Brad Pitt*

(That'd be cool, wouldn't it? If you broke rules one and two and he showed up? Like some sort of bruised and battered fairy fightmother.)

And then, for a play I co-wrote a few years ago, about superheroes in mediation and counseling, I got Agatha Christie.

Um.

So, in short, I don't support this site 100%. I'd say I support it 37%.

But it was kinda fun to analyze it all, nonetheless.

Merry, merry!

( Wherein I discuss snoring, tans, state of the bed, jam, diets, big thighs, my immense dorkiness and Commercials on TNT )

Now aren't you glad you read all that? Aren't you a better person for knowing it all?

No?

Well, at least you got to see my new layout. :) Goodnight.

• The boys had an awesome time at golf and tennis camp.  They are tanner and blonder and worn out, but happy.
• I did some fun shopping with mom, got to cook with my little sister, fix my niece's gorgeous hair, argue the semantics of a properly drawn sun with my nephew, absconded with some custom made pottery from my Tom, drank a bottle of wine with my girlfriend and discovered my BIL's sense of humor.
• Traffic.  Good heavens.  It took 30 minutes to get out of Arlington today, and another 45 to get out of the metroplex.  How the heck did I ever live there?  I 35 has got to be on one of the rings of hell.
• Also, the heat.  The heeeeaaat.  The humidity.  The freakin' mosquitoes.  Good heavens above.  My skin may dry out on the caprock, but at least my hair looks good. ;)
• I slipped an fell (on my face!) on Mom and Tom's deck this morning and I'm a mass of aches and pains.  Man, I feel old.  Knee and shoulder are not working properly, even after having been iced down after it happened.
• The boys and I listened to Deathly Hallows on the way home.  Six hours of listening to Jim Dale, and we're not even to the 500 page camping trip.  Long winded much, JK?
• I like Jim's character voices, but his narration voice drives me cuh-razy.  Also, his Hermione voice. "Harrrrryyyyyyyyy!."  Good gracious.  Do people talk like that?
• Six hours in a car.  I stopped in a drive through for dinner and the boys ran in for a pit stop, but I realized once I was home that I never got out of the car, from Arlington to Amarillo.
• We got a new mattress while I was away, apparently.  The Carrie and Nolan bed saga (with a MPAA rating of PG)  deserves a post of its own.  For now, I'm going to say, "Um... no."
• I took two Advil Pm about 30 minutes ago (so I could sleep through the aches and pains from my idiotic fall) and it's like typing with gloves on.  Lots of backspacing.
• It's good to be home.  I'd say it was great to be in my own bed... but this ain't it.
• Since I'm about to crash face first into the laptop, (twice in one day on my face would be a bit much, methinks) I'll bid everyone a good night and happy weekend!

*crashZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*

Some rhetorical, some Socratic, all valid.

Why do the workers finishing the road near my home insist on starting their Earth movers at 6:30 in the morning?

Why can I sleep through anything but that noise?

Why do my children find a way to argue over even things that they AGREE on?

Why do I spend time thinking about people who have hurt me?

Why do I still care about said folks?

Why is it 35 degrees during Spring Break?

Why is it when I can't turn my head, the Chiropractor has taken the week off?

Why is it that some of my dearest friends live so very far away?

What does the color blue taste like?

Why, when I need to hang on for dear life to the barely tangible threads of plot, that my characters want to chatter on about nothing in particular?

Why is Penny dating Leonard when Sheldon is the clear choice? COME ON!

Why won't Bones and Booth JUST ADMIT THAT THEY lurrrrrrve each other?

Why do mushrooms taste so good in everything?

Why, when I KNOW I need a good wine opener, do I CONTINUALLY forget to buy one?

***

I think I'll soldier through with the wine opener I have, have a few glasses, and maybe I won't care about these questions quite so much. ;)

Good day to you all.

Yesterday afternoon in the car driving across town, Ethan decides that all of my CDs are not worth listening to (I think I've not taken any out of the changer for a year), takes my ipod out of my purse and plugs it into the tape deck converter thingy, then in the time it would have taken me to discover that the little orange "hold" button is on, clicks his way to Journey's Greatest Hits, and informs me that he and some friends are singing "Don't Stop Believing" for their talent show.

Glee. The great music equalizer.

He informed me that no, he did most certainly did not need my help with choreography. *huffs*

That isn't the point of the story, though. We're driving along, singing at the top of our lungs (me having illicit thoughts about Cory Monteith and Ethan doing a passable Steve Perry), ignoring the eye rolling going on in Aaron's corner of the car, when Ethan abruptly stops the music.

And informs me that I'm singing the wrong words.

I say something along the lines of "Oh, ho, little blond boy who is nine years old! You think you know better than I who had this album on vinyl and then tape and then CD? You think you know better than me?"

All this said in a very smug Iknowmorethanyou tone of voice.

Turns out, he did in fact know more than me. Since 1981, or as near to that as I was allowed to listen to rock music, I thought the words were "I've seen her in a smokey room... the smell of wine and cheap perfume." As it happens, the lyrics are "A singer in a smokey room...." What the hell, Journey? ENUNCIATE the next time you release one of my favorite songs so thirty something women don't have to watch their nine year-old sons do the "I was right" dance. (Which he totally gets from his father.)

Okay? That'd be great. Thanks muchly.