Tracks to Clementine

In dangerous code!

Yo ho.

Front Room Behavior

I just had to stop myself from saying "Good thing you were wearing pants!" in response to a complaint regarding heat and vinyl seats.

24 Years Ago

I get almost as excited about the anniversary of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens as I do about my birthday.

I mean, it was just so freaking amazing. I'm a bit in the mood to go back to my hometown and dig around in the topsoil and find the ashen layers deep down in the dirt. It made the best mud ever.

I'm cool with Mt. Rainier holding onto its top, though, 'k?

Pardon me sirbutcouldyou--

I just read an email which included the words "we might need Ida to come in as an understudy for next week's shows, which means we need to have a rehearsal some time this week."

Uh. Who's in the what, now?

Let's just dial up the ole voice mail, shall we? Aha! There's the part where I'm actually asked to do the above thing, y'know, understudy a role which includes seven characters, which are: a hag, a snapping turtle, a water scorpion, a snake, a bunch of tadpoles, a baby frog, a princess...and a bunch of complicated blocking...

True, true, this would be for a show that I adapted and directed, but...I AM FREAKING OUT JUST A LITTLE BIT RIGHT NOW.

Of course, I would get to wear that American Flag kerchief...

Funky Winkerbean: Some but not all...

Dear Playwrights,

Some tips:

• page numbers are useful
• the correct form is pleasing
  • your or you're?
  • there or their?
  • here or hear?
• double-check usage of definite articles
• we're judging you...perhaps unfairly, but its fore you're own good

Best regards,

Ida

Halo Tarnish

This morning I did two things I've not done since high school: showered in a gym bathroom and left my hair product-free.

The first was on purpose: I actually got up and worked out before I had to go to work. Right when I turned on the water I heard "Ida!" My friend and I had a lovely conversation between shower stalls about Hansel and Gretel.

The second was a complete accident and so far has proved to be just fine. Which is a little disconcerting: I love hair product; rally I do. So far I have limited frizz, but it's not completely dry yet and I have yet to go outside into the wreck-making humidity.

Plus, I'm temping with an ad firm today and they are all good-lookin'.

Whaddle I do?

(Mind you, regardless of good-lookin', about five-minutes into being here I remembered that I mostly don't want to be. I am rather a laissez-faire temp: I look cute and I'm quick on the up-take, but no matter what my attitude is "I'm doing you a favor here, chums, so quit looking at my monkey-curling, wither-shall-I-go coif." I've got scripts to read!)

De-Gilding the Lily

The good stuff has been salvaged.
The trees out front are being destroyed after Saturday's artwalk.
There's no moving the house to another spot.
Demolition begins next Friday.

On Mulberry Street

This is the Rutland Library and cemetery.

Follow on to view a tiny smattering of pictures from my recent trip. (Also known as Ida is Looking at These Pictures Because They Make Her Smile and She Listened to Too Much NPR Already Today.)

This was taken from the platform of the Springfield, Mass Amtrak station. I wandered around Springfield in the wrong direction for about three hours. "Wrong" means that I saw about 90 bars plus one historic center filled with sketchy-looking folk. "Right" would have allowed me to stumble across the Dr. Seuss sculpture garden.

This is the frame of the bed I slept on in my grandparent's home. It was proclaimed to be "one hundred years old, but pretty comfortable." I found it to be "very narrow and excessively bouncy."

This is my grandfather preparing to make me poached eggs on toast from bread he baked. Looks harmless, doesn't he? Note the reflection in the oven door on the right.

I was obsessed with this clock and the damaged wall. The rest of the house is in good repair, but this section was...well, kinda creepy, really. It's especially strange that nothing has been done to fix it when you consider that twenty miles away is an eight-room log house entirely constructed by my grandfather and filled with furniture he built. He could fix it; he just hasn't. He wants to live in the log house; my step-grandmother doesn't. This wall is, like, the visual representation of their mutual dissatisfaction with their lot.

I am also obsessed with Boutros Boutros Ghali. This was taken at the United Nations building during my self-guided "Jamie and Claudia Kincaid Tour of New York City." There were no Boutros Boutros Ghali postcards in the giftshop, so instead I bought a shot glass for Evan. Because that's what the United Nations really represents: diplomacy through social drinking.

This here is Cleopatra's Needle in Central Park, just outside of the Metropolitan Musem of Art. It is of note because I think it is cool and its phallic image preceded the loss of a pair of underwear...which I removed in the bathroom in the Egyptian section of the Met without first removing my pants. It's either a good story or a gross story; I'd probably tell it to you if we were drinking at the UN.

Being on top of the Empire State Building was really cool until I realized that these pigeons might poop on my head.

"People got dead in there." This is the graveyard surrounding Trinity Church in the Financial District near the World Trade Center site.

And me, contemplating my feet, which were all torn-up-and-taped from walking around every neighborhood in Manhattan. (Or me, suddenly transported to the 1940s and composing a Song of Reflection at the piano.)

What's that spell?

In addition to tap-dancing bovines, future works of mine shall include cheerleading chickens that pluck feathered pom-poms from their own bodies.

Gimmee a C! Gimmee an O! Gimee a W!

Tap Dancing Cow

My friends, sometimes the only thing that makes a miserable not-play bearable is an after-the-fact discussion with middle school students who actually learned things by attending said production.*

It still would have been better if people in a cow suit started tap dancing across the stage, though. Like this:

Bones and Jones are sitting on the porch. Bones is drinking a glass of milk. A rhythmic sound is heard offstage.

Jones: Where did you get that milk?

Bones: I bought it.

Tap Dancing Cow dances past them.

The End.

*It Is Not Anything But the Blues You Have Been Served

Rabbit Rabbit

A series of questions asked of me by strangers (as opposed to the darts team I met) while in New York City:

"Hey, does Aries go all the way through April?"

"Do you know how to get to 110 Canal?"

"Are you going in?"

"Are you Terry?"

"Do you know where Ground Zero is?"

"Are you from Seattle?"

"Do you design your own rings?"

"So, d'you like cows?"

Home again, home again.