Highlights from last night's round of Ghosty:
"I feel like I'm on a Zelda quest; it's like I'm in a video game!"
"I'll call you back in half an hour--I gotta do some ghostbusting first."
"Let's clothesline that maid and take that lantern from her!"
"We need more light--she took the flashlight! Wait, that's okay: we have cell phones."
"She needs something blue, something blue--that shampoo bottle's blue! That could be it!"
Tonight we are adding a quarantined ghost whose talisman must be slid under a door and a severed hand!
Please come to Ghosty.
It's eerily bittersweet.
Today is Ian's birthday.
When he was small I used to rock him and feel his heart beating against my chest. Now he is too big to pick up, but we hold hands when we walk in public places.
I never pulled an all-nighter in college. Initially this was because I didn't drink coffee and it was nigh impossible to stay awake; later it morphed into believing I was more alert early in the morning, so I'd go to bed around 11pm and get up at 6am or earlier for freshly inspired thinking. I was twenty-eight-years-old the first time I stayed awake all night and into the night of the next day: an undocumented spread of thirty-six hours of physical alertness most certainly unrelated to scholastic endeavors.
I tell you this because I just made a little to-do list of the next few days and the accomplishment of each item will be best achieved through the invocation of Extra Day. As Extra Day has yet to Brigadoon itself into existence, I'm going to have to John Galt-it over the next two nights. It'll be great, especially since I have to teach in the between times (including work on the student-written abortion play) and am considering painting the kitchen floor. Hey, pounds of alert energy, whyncha sidle over to me?
(I ain't complaining; I'm titillated by this dare of graveyard shifts.)
Hi, Ida:
For every year you gain so do I--and I'm beginning to despair that I'll ever see any great grandchildren. That is, unless you get with it and find that special guy.
I love you and hope you'll have a nice birthday--with someone whose a future grandson. (by marriage.)
Love,
Grandpa
Two and two are four
Four and four are eight
Eight and eight are sixteen
And sixteen and sixteen are thirty-two.
(Come to Cyclops at 9pm.)
I'm getting much more done at work today what with my main email address not working.
But it's crap.
(Also crap is that I can't draw on the floor in the particular classroom that I'm teaching in this afternoon. This changes everything. My way! I want it my way!)
Not at all crap is that we got into JFK this weekend and I'm ready to move. Warm quiet house with large quiet view. No parties to follow.
That was my predicament last night at 9:47pm. I pulled into a gas station, all excited to use my spare tire--something I'd not done since 1988.
I got out of the car, pulled my hair into a ponytail and opened the trunk. In order to get to my spare tire and jack, the following items had to be removed from my trunk:
The wind was blowing so hard though, that as I was trying to manuever the spare tire without removing any other items from the trunk, the roll of craft paper fell over onto my left hip. Almost immediately, a well-dressed man got out of his car and lifted the roll from my hip and then stood there holding it.
"Thanks, but you don't have to hold onto that. I can put it on the ground."
"Ehhh, pardon me?"
Craft Paper man had an accent which I could not discern through the wind (but which entirely explained the well-dressed component). I thanked him again and took the paper from his hands. In a stroke of genius, I placed the roll over the mic stand and started fiddling with the jack, but it was hard-fixed in place in a dark corner of the trunk and I was having a hard time seeing.
"Can I help you?"
This time it was an Eastern Washington looking guy with a shabby haircut and a hat, holding a cup of coffee.
"Yeah, could you kinda yank that jack outta there for me?"
He did, after some fiddling, then offered to change the tire. I paused for a minute. I am woman. Can change tire on own. No need for man. I immediately reconsidered: why why why would I say no? Offering to help is a nice thing to do.
So I talked to him and rearranged my trunk while he changed the tire. I thanked him profusely after he'd finished and closed the trunk. He looked at the car, then at me. Then he said:
"I was walking along to my buddy's house, I passed you, and then I thought, 'maybe if I turn around and help her with her tire, she'll give me a ride.' But never mind. Have a good night."
I felt a little guilty about this, but also wasn't really prepared to give a strange man a ride to his buddy's house in the dark of night. I looked at the car where he'd been looking: clearly seen through the window once the trunk is closed is the Darling carseat. Aha! Man give up because think Woman have Child.
The age-old moral of this story: you can totally get people (men) to help you change your tire if the pre-amble to retreiving the spare features leaning over your trunk in low-slung jeans while wearing a sweater that rides up to reveal a bit of waist-into-to-hips.
(It's not like I did any of that on purpose. I am entirely aware of the unfair properties of Girl Ass. And I totally could have changed that tire on my own. Gonna have to remember that carseat trick, though.)
Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay!
Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay!
Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay!
Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay!
Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay!
I have just hatched a January party plan:
Everyone comes to JFK (aka The New House) to make action figures of themselves out of various materials. Then we have a battle. And we film the battle. And then we watch the the battle while eating some cold cereal.
So good or no good? Should I leave it as a party or should I try to turn it into a fundraiser for our fair theatre? (Because I could do that.)
"What are you doing?"
"Stretching. What are you doing?"
"Watching you writhe around on the floor to Boston."
Who wouldn't be flummoxed by a plane-watcher who stops by your desk with a wheeze preventing inhaler and then wants a hug because Kill Bill was so awful?
(Okay. Pretend you're me. Now answer that question.)
There are birds in the shape of people flocking near my windows.
Tonight is the Meet & Greet for And Also Fierce and I'm getting snow day excited about it. Everyone in one room, all new project energy, and a reading of an in-process script. Six weeks from today we'll be onstage with an audience; hopefully they'll all be deliciously scared.
I sure am.
(PS Molly is the best one because she bakes surprise cake when you are mad at Renton.)
I have just returned from a three-hour teaching stint at a religiously affiliated university in Tacoma. Yes, it featured a drive which began at 6:30am, yes, it featured a Dean of Students with a charmingly heavy Southern accent, and yes, it featured an education undergrad wearing a yellow t-shirt with the words "Jesus was a passionate lover" across the chest.
I was planning on being all judgmental about it as, well, I do get all judgmental when I have to get up so early and am all nervous about my work. (I was nervous in this case because I'm, um, not a very regular theatre teacher and I get all scared about being too, um, arty, especially when the two other teachers I'm teaching with are all Super Fun Theatre Games Anyone Can Use in Their Classroom style.)
But it ruled. I ran around in my boots and sexy librarian glasses and said things like "Zero Population Growth" when I meant "now I would like different people to come up, but please let the number of actors remain the same" and "explode your choices" when I meant "your gestures suck ass little scaredy." (Okay, that last one really verges on too arty, but it worked in this case.)
As a result, when my group got up to do their forced-link poems in front of all the other groups of forced-link poems, they demonstrated strong and varied choices of level, shape, and vocal dynamics.
I'm not saying that the other groups were bad or that I am such a better teacher than the other two teaching artists (because that's not the case at all), just that I'm really happy that things worked out so well, especially when I used non-traditional methods in what was supposed to be a traditional class (aka "Ida thought she might get in trouble again").
Now I'm going to put on a Mountain Goats t-shirt and a Fat Boy sweatshirt and turn myself into Sophie Ducat for awhile. And just when too much of that admin gets to me, I'll have three luxurious hours of middle-school acting students.
I'm the luckiest girl in the whole world. (I've also consumed a quantity of caffeine.)
There are things real true and things drama true, but it's things twilight true that get me everytime.
You can always count on two weeks to reveal something like (1) Sandtrap II in the form of (2) Hickey Girl resulting in (3) stupidmotherfuckinggoddamactors.
I've got to come up with a rule beyond Must Have Bedframe.
This morning's school day began with a Bearded Lady.
She sported a full on Dr. Hoovie-type beard with grey in it plus long dark hair, a loose cotton knee-length dress, and shiny hair-free legs. The students at this school were astonishingly quiet and responded to inside-voice directions from the Bearded Lady Teacher.
I really don't see any other option. I'm still a little dumbfounded myself.
Bearded Lady.