Let us say that someone else's erstwhile Morning Boss jokingly-but-seriously is trying to convince you to become her assistant.
Let us also say that you have already negotiated the ability to determine your own hours, partial dominion over musical selections, and the use of a fake name.
Let us further say that you would only have to commit through December, in case it became too complicated to balance with other more artful work.
Would you do it?
But wait, there's more: this part-time work would replace a chunk of stress-making random teaching, free-up time for more writing, and result in a dependable weekly paycheck (as opposed to sporadic independent contractor checks). In theory. It might also just make you crazy because it's a fairly irritating and repetitive job and the management of the organization is fury-making.
Would you do it?
I even had a camera this time; I just forgot to bring it.
Tonight's birthday cake was prepared in the offices of the theatre, fell over in my car, was repaired by dome light, then taken into the bar.
For Amandalee, it featured 23 chocolate cupcakes stacked, angled, and skewered to create a kind of bush tree. The cupcakes were frosted green, then the whole tray was sprinkled with green coconut so it looked like it had sprouted out of a lawn. I poked doll arms into six of the cupcakes and placed a Rainier cherry into each pair of outstretched hands. The remainder of the cherry pint was strewn about the sculpture and the platter. The majority of the candles surrounded the cupcakes; a few were poked into the non-handed bits.
It kinda looked like the lunch pail tree from Ozma of Oz except that arms were offering the fruits like so many disembodied supplicants. It was well-received by those who knew me already, particularly in the soft candlelight, but other people at the bar were somewhat creeped out by the doll parts. All in all, a success.
But I missed Molly. It's nice to have two people when you're dying coconut and trying to convince yourself it will be brilliant. (All due respect to Jaye during the grocery trip. She approved the cherries.)
If you must know, if I'd read the Spring Festival information page thoroughly, we would have known that it ended on Sunday and that there were no rides on Monday. But, c'mon, who takes the rides down before the day that is actually the holiday?
Carnies, that's who.
Nonetheless, our 24-hour trip was a riveting success. We still got to play Who's Your Boyfriend and Who's Your Ex-boyfriend. We still were obviously ogled everywhere we went. (Dear Men of Moses Lake: We can seeeeeeee you. Best regards, Ida and Sjet.) We still ate tacos at Tacos El Rey. We still looked at the ditch and camped in a borrowed tent.
Ah, the campgrounds. We pitched our tent at Willows Trailer Village, a location two miles from the home of my youth and to which Erin and I would trek to buy things like Lemonheads and Boston Baked Beans and Fun-Dip. We'd eat sugar and wonder why anyone would camp in the middle of nowhere. (Really there is fishing nearby and I'm pretty sure several families are not camping but living in those RV's.) Sjet and I bivouacked next to drunken and stoned softball players who hassled us in a fashion that I'll leave her to charmingly relay.
My hometown feels like it always did, but there were things I was not anticipating. Say, a million billion flags everywhere. Sure, sure, it was Memorial Day, but there were giant flags in front of every business and many homes. We stopped in Ellensburg later and only saw two flags, so it wasn't just Eastern Washington. It was peculiar. There were so many flags at the cemetery that I couldn't breathe.
We decided to go to the cemetery after we'd discovered that the carnies had betrayed us and that there was absolutely nothing else open. I had the ukuleles in the car for busking purposes, so the new plan was to go sit at the graves of my grandparents and play songs that they would like. The Moses Lake Cemetery is out in the middle of nowhere, just southeast of the sugar beet factory, just this side of derelict. I was picturing it to look like it always does: empty. I should have known better.
We took the left off "M" and the oasis of flat gravestones and a few trees was revealed to now be an oasis of artful granite in a new parking lot (still made of unplanted field), about two hundred flags, and the entire town—living and dead. The only thing that made this slightly less disconcerting was that about twenty minutes earlier we'd seen a September 11 memorial in front of the library that horrified us, mostly just because it existed. The spot it's in is the same spot that the town places a nativity scene every year, so we were imagining the Baby Jesus and some shepherds strung up between two basalt towers. With that thought in our minds and ukuleles in hand we got out of the car. "If we run into anyone I know, it's going to be here," I said.
We walked towards the Mormon section of the cemetery (eerily titled Garden of Deseret) and I immediately saw about thirty people with whom I could make small talk. We slowed down our pace. The throngs moved on and we noticed that my grandparents' grave had been decorated with a heart made of hand-strewn yellow roses and a jar of peonies. Seeing something that my living relatives had made not so long ago (the flowers had not yet wilted) made me feel a little guilty for not calling any of them. We sat down near the point of the flower and I took my ukulele out of its case.
We had plucked out I Love You Truly and Bicycle Built for Two when a man came up and said, "are you singing for your grandparents? Which son do you belong to?" Sonya said, "I don't belong to anyone" (as she's done on other occasions when we've run into my relatives) as I stood up and said "I'm Max's daughter." I took off my glasses. "You're Elden, right?"
Elden remembered me without the glasses. He had on a feedlot hat and his teeth were perfect. I was amazed that I'd remembered his name, especially since I'm sure I've never said it outloud as a greeting. We talked about how his wife had died last year and how my father took me flying in his little blue Grumman. We admired the roses and peonies. Elden reminded me that the yellow roses had come from the rosebush my grandmother had tended at their home in Vernal, Utah.
I'd forgotten that. I knew both flowers were my grandmother's favorites and that they'd come from her yard—my aunt and uncle live there now with their two still-at-home teenagers—but I'd forgotten that she'd transplanted that yellow rosebush when they moved to Moses Lake in 1942.
Elden left us to talk to his son (my second-cousin-once-removed) and I began to play The 6ths You You You You You. While we were singing it, I thought of what I would transport from place to place in my own life, what it would be that I would tend carefully for over fifty years, what it would be that my grandchildren might touch while forgetting its origin.
I'm pretty sure I know.
Sjet and I are just about to head off to Moses Lake. We will sleep in a tent in a field, eat tacos, revel in the history of irrigation, ride some carnival rides, and possibly sing some songs about bugs.
If we're particularly clever, we'll be stealing the crown of Miss Moses Lake for Molly (who cannot come due to continued cat pill-age).
Or maybe we'll just busker.
If I ever complain that people just aren't grasping the complexities of my work, will someone point out that perhaps these "complextities" are a figment of my imagination and perhaps I might add a little more story to my story? Either that or shake me by the shoulders and say "shut the fuck up and re-write the script, pretentiou-ass!"
(Ian, I know you're way ahead of me on this one.)
I can't believe that anyone for reals actually spouts that arty-snarky "they do not understand my work" crappity. But I've heard it at least five times over the past six weeks from the same person and I am dumbfounded. Way to welcome your audience, bitch-hole.
Today I survived by telling the director that it was time for our prayer circle in the booth before the house was opened. I don't know what it'll take next time.
Steps to reducing melancholy:
You are now not an almond.
Turns out that the Purple Panther guy did get married, but the guy I saw was the guy whose tattoo was a dagger with a rose around it.
This evening's events are making me feel like running in the yard with sparklers.
After the show, I glanced in the mirror and my initial reaction was "that's not me." The lighting combined with the startled look on my face made me look just like I did when I was twenty, with whispy little monkey hair curls around my face and neck from wearing a ponytail all day.
Then I went to the grocery store and saw this guy that it took me four aisles and the checkout line to place. He'd been in a band with an old boyfriend and they sang this song called "Bobo Come Home" about a lost dog (but all the other songs were crap) and I think his name was Bob. Then I think he got a tattoo of a purple panther or married and they weren't in a band anymore. He left the store right before I figured out who he was or I would have demanded to see the purple panther. Purple Panther!
And then I talked to the most adorable girl in the universe who will be living in the Maid's Room come June 10th. She's so excited to live here that she picked up my call and talked to me for twenty minutes, forgetting that she'd left her dad on the other line.
No one will be able to resist the summertime wonder of our home. I'd better start making sangria right now (so's it's not spodie-odie-odie like all the other times).
It appears my malady is no mere Attention Surplus Syndrome; I've been re-diagnosed with Severe Attention Surplus Syndrome.
I had my students do an exercise adapted from a class I took at Goode Olde Snootye Artye Universitye. The written instructions were as follows:
They were to speak to no one. Upon returning, they read the following information:
We were going to continue work on our guerilla marketing projects, but it's the end of the year and people are continually absent, on school outings, or traumatized. So, original plan scrapped and new insta-plan created so they could go meander in the sunshine.
That's pretty much what we've been doing since the middle of April. I keep thinking I'm going to get in trouble with Administration, but so far it seems to be okay. Even so, I focused really hard on a piece of paper I was carrying in hopes that the Upper School Director wouldn't notice me as I walked out of the building.
On Friday a stranger rested her head on my shoulder as we perched on the arm of a couch. She was having difficulty seeing the action of the show "and it's late." Even later, oranges were consumed and ghosts discussed as Molly slept under a blanket on the couch.
On Saturday my life was saved by pretty girls who prevented my hill-rolling descent from ending in a mash of gravel and cyclone fencing. Naked ghosts were discussed.
On Sunday twenty-three years ago, Mount St. Helens erupted. In the present, I drank a beer and hid from the scary producers in the theatre with other techies. Desert ghosts were discussed.
I'm in love with ghosts, and not in an Ann and Nancy Wilson sort of way. (Possibly in an Indigo Girls sort of way.)
You guys, I want to eat toasted marshmallows right now.
Sometimes there's nothing better than sitting on a balcony during a lunar eclipse, feeling someone's gaze, and looking up just in time to see the red sweatshirted guy looking up at you as he trips entirely over the curb, especially when the tripping is followed by a little "hey, there" gesture with his left hand.
PS: My favorite cue every night? When I lean my tiara-decked headset-ed head into the draped blacks and whisper "plaaaaaay" to the pianist.
At the tone, Pacific Daylight Time will be...Beer o'Clock.
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.
(I've heard it told that beer o'clock is often followed by beer-thirty.)
Tonight, during the part in the video clip where Jimmy opens the ring box to propose to Suzanne, I got on headset to say "Wouldn't it be funny if instead of a ring in the box there were a severed finger?" except that all everyone else on headset heard was me giggling breathily and uncontrollably at how funny it would be if instead of a ring in the box there were a severed finger.
Why do so many jewelry stores have ads that sound like those for used car lots? "Are you ready to rock?!? On sale now: 4 carat diamonds and brilliant emeralds! Tuesday! Tuesday! Tuesday!"
I always end up thinking that I'd better trade in my mother's wedding ring for a tennis bracelet, jump on a Ski-doo (with a lifejacket, of course), and ride off to the horsey farm across the lake. Once there, I'd be the sensitive bad ass who has to put the broken-legged down. The sunlight would catch the twenty-one diamonds at my wrist and the tear in my eye as I took careful aim.
(Uh oh. I think I might be mixing my metaphors. Grammar! Grammar! Grammar!)
There is a stack of planks leaned up against our porch with a note that says "Remodeling Project."
"Remodeling Project?" What the hey-nonny-nonny?
Our landlord seems to have forgotten to tell us something.
Things the wood might mean:
The third is the most likely. We're always getting deliveries for our landlord. Special deliveries.
This didn't happen at my old apartment. That landlord would leave pie in my fridge and always seemed to show up when I was wearing a towel.
Mysterious planks might be better. (And shut up that I said "pie in my fridge." Shutupshutupshutup!)