When left to my own devices

Note to self: When listless, don't head to Target list-less.

Day three without rehearsal. What did I ever do before the musical? Oh, yeah. Kitchen renovation. But what did I do before that? Oh, yeah. Serial first dating.

Not quite sure what to do with myself after work tonight, I decided to head up to the Valhalla of Halloween crap and costumes and pull together something for Friday. Mostly, it was to kill time. I am a project girl without a project and slowly but surely I'm trying to get comfortable with that. In the meantime, I took myself wig shopping.

And, since I was out of the house and in the neighborhood, I ran to Target. I was only looking for a pair of tights to go with the kicky little wig I got at the costume shop, but ended up with a few more random items. Here's what I left with:

• Fingerless knit arm warmers (think leg warmers for your arms)
• Knee socks
• A new sweater
• A new black shirt
• Fruit bars
• A new candle
• The tights I had originally gone in there for

Did I need any of these things? No. And, did I want any of them before I went into the store? Except for the tights, no. But I did walk away with them. And here I am sitting in my cold house with my fingerless arm warmers keeping my wrists warm, eating a fruit bar, with the fragrance from my new candle wafting through the room, thinking about how I can wear the knee socks over the tights for my costume. Black shirt? Wardrobe staple. And the sweater. Well, I have to admit I bought 3 of the same type of sweater last year all in different colors--and I love them. In fact, I was wearing one of them today whilst I shopped. So I will definitely wear the new one. Okay, cool. I just needed to justify myself to myself.

Unleaded

Good news, Internets.

I survived opening weekend of the musical--more thoughts and musings on that to come--and that's not even the good news. No, the good news is now that we are in our run, we don't have mid-week rehearsals which means I can have my life back. And when we get right down to it, that means I will resume regular blogging. Yes, peanut gallery, that one's for you!

There are several posts floating around my head, but it's been a long (and full and exhilarating and memorable) weekend, so I'm going to head to bed. I did have a fleeting thought of getting myself grounded and prepared to head back to work tomorrow, maybe take a couple of things off of the plate, but my body is telling me no.

But, before I listened to my body, I made a preemptive strike on myself to try to stay awake, at least a little bit; I had a decaf coffee after dinner with my parents tonight. I drink coffee maybe once every other week, yet, I am on the receiving end of many a jab for drinking decaf. Essentially, I have a caffeine-free diet. Those who know me would confirm that I'm quite energetic without it. I like to say that I'm "naturally caffeinated," and that even a cup of decaf has just enough juice in it to fire up the jets, but not make my brain bounce around in my head. However, before I left the restaurant, I did a quick scan of the table and realized that in my one cup of decaf, I used six--yes, a half-dozen--packets of sugar. Note to self: Your "natural caffeination" may not have anything to do with nature or caffeine. Apparently my jets are fired up by sugar. Lots and lots of sugar.

Did it freeze over?

Note to self: Humility is driving your parents around the city in a pearlescent PT Cruiser.

Never did I think the day would arrive when I was seated in the driver's seat of a PT Cruiser. But my friends, that day has arrived and it was today.

My parents are in town for the opening weekend of Into the Woods, and the vehicle they got from Thrifty rentals is a PT Cruiser. I know I may offend some PT Cruiser lovers out there--I shudder at the thought that they actually exist--but that is one embarrassing car. I have severe physical reactions to them, and swore that it would be a cold day in hell before I ever drove one. Apparently my convictions aren't as strong as they once were, or all of these late night rehearsals have worn down my defenses to drive, or be seen in, ridiculous automobiles.

Maybe it's the former, because when I was in Denver for my dad's surprise party, I was forced into an HHR. Almost as bad as a PT Cruiser, but not quite. There's something about the cruiser that is just off. Maybe it's the fact that whenever I see one, I think it should have a yellow Z with flames painted on the side, and then I look for ZZ Top to appear on the side of the road and do that shwoopy snap thing when it drives by--let this site load and watch the opening flash for 10 seconds, you'll see what I mean and you'll never be the same again.

Feeding my inner-child

It's completely pointless to go to the store these days. Rare is the moment I have to eat at home especially with a week full of dress rehearsals.

I was scrounging through my kitchen today, looking for lunch. Finding nothing truly substantial, I fixed myself the 30-somethings' answer to a preschooler classic: peanut butter and jelly. Only the grown-up version uses organic all-natural peanut butter, on multi-grain organic artisan bread, and to wash it down, lactose-free milk.

Will be using them to get what I want

Number one thing on my to do list today: go to Victoria's Secret and buy boobs.

Dress rehearsals start tomorrow and I am in desperate need for some cleavage. The dresses for the evil stepmother are, shall we say, liberal in the "chestal region," and my everyday bras were not doing the costume (or my girls) justice.

So earlier this afternoon, I walked myself into VS, went right up to an associate and before she could ask if I needed assistance, I told her I needed the "most pushiest-up of the push-up bras." Twenty minutes later (ten of which were spent rigging the girls into the new contraption) I walked out of there at least two cup-sizes bigger than when I entered.

Note to self: For the right price--and with the right materials, like patented gel inserts--a new rack can be all yours.

Not even red bull can give me wings

Note to self: The two weeks before a performance will leave you exhausted, postless, and drooling on yourself.

I know I keep making big promises about posts forthcoming. But, I just have. No. Energy. No. Words. No. Nothing.

I think I've already mentioned that Into the Woods has TAKEN OVER MY ENTIRE LIFE. Don't get me wrong, I love it. But it's throwing my sense of normalcy completely off. And taking all my energy. Energy that I normally put toward writing.

So my blog muse has had to put her energy into my acting and singing. She's tapped out. And that's an okay thing, I'm just letting you know that I want to give you my all, but my all is stuck in late night rehearsals in a cafeteria turned theater.

Bag lady reprise

I am heavy with guilt today.


Even though I like to take really long, really hot showers, I try to make up for my wastefulness by conserving in other areas. I compost and recycle my stuff; I compost and recycle other people's stuff. I'll travel with stuff just so I can compost and recycle it. This is part environmentalist and part guilty Catholic. Whilst sometimes it's easier to throw something away, a little voice always seems to call out to me, "wait, is that non-dairy, non-meat product something that can be put in the yard waste bin?" Or, "is the number on that plastic less than seven?" Or, "if I scrub this foil hard enough can it live to see another slice of pizza?"

Once in awhile I ignore that voice. I don't do that very often, because she tends to screech and holler, and nag and nag and nag, and I like to avoid that at all cost. Today, however, I ignored that voice. And, voice, I'm going on the record to say that others convinced me to avoid you, so lay off, would ya?

You may recall in my haste to prepare for the demolition of my kitchen, I came across multiple stashes of Ziploc baggies. Baggies that I could not bring myself to throw away because a) yes, I do have an 80 year-old grandmother living inside of me, b) you can save money and the planet by washing them out and reusing them, and c) that incessant voice would have screamed like a banshee were I to ever approach the garbage can with one of those perfectly good bags in hand. So the bags accumulated, and then I would hide the piles in my last minute efforts to clean my kitchen before company arrived, and then when I found them all during the remodel, I didn't have a sink and I was certainly NOT going to wash them all in the bathtub, so I told the voice to politely go make herself busy and I threw them out.

A little bit of guilt, but I could justify it.

Today was a little more challenging.

About a year ago, we ran a program at work that required 5000 straws. Stop and let that soak in for a second--5000 straws. End-to-end that's well over a half a mile of straws. In fact that's so many straws, that on one day, we bought all of the straws that every straw-selling stores stock in our city. If you were frantically looking for straws on that day and you couldn't find any anywhere? That was because of me.

It turns out the person that requested the straws (and ping pong balls and boxes of stick pins) over estimated on the number of straws we really needed. You mean 5000 was too many? Who would have ever guessed that? And where did those 2000 extra straws live for the past year? In my office. And wouldn't you know, today was the last straw, literally and figuratively.

In a fit to clean my space I started clearing out drawers and realized the first thing that had to go were these straws (and other random accessories). But I felt dread at the thought of throwing the straws away. What if someone, somewhere could use them? Maybe I could donate them. Or maybe I should keep them, they may come in useful some other day. Yes, the day you need 2000 straws, and ping pong balls, and stick pins. But we all know that day will never come, so I did the unthinkable--and threw the straws away.

I cringe just thinking about it. But as the people (names are being withheld to protect the guilty, er, innocent?) who made me do it said, "you do so many other good things, it's okay to be bad just this once." Alright, I may have just paraphrased that, but I swear, they made me do it!

Note to self: Say 10 Hail Marys, an Our Father, and the Act of Contrition, and maybe then I'll have absolved my soul of the atrocity committed upon the straws.

On my own behalf, I would like to add the fact that I didn't just throw all of the materials out. No. I recycled the page of instructions accompanying each set of straws, and I gathered up all of the ping pong balls and took them down to one of the ping pong tables in the building (LMNT moonlighted as the "Ping Pong Ball Fairy"). As for the stick pins, I kept nearly all of the boxes and offered them up to the seamstresses in my life--mostly those who do costumes for the theater troupe. And, best of all, all of these things were stored in, get this, plastic Ziploc bags. So I painstakingly opened and emptied around 40 bags and, yes, I brought all of those bags home with me. I may not have made up for throwing all of those other bags away, but I most definitely replenished my cache. And if you were a crazy bag lady like me (or like your grandmother) you would have done the same.

Happy birthday, dear blog...

One year ago today, this little blog was born. It was actually conceived about one year prior to that, with a classic note to self that I have yet to post, and think I will probably finally get that one out to the Internet next week for the one-year birthday of my blog going public. Confused yet?

At the time, I really thought this was a fleeting whim, something akin to journaling--which I always have a habit of letting fall by the wayside. But, surprisingly, I've stayed rather consistent (as FCA groans, okay, so I may have had one or two weeks, one being last week, where I have gone radio silent, but two out of 52 ain't so bad).

There are lots of angles I could take here, I could reflect on the year I've had--talk about cool if not completely random things happening, like this, this, this, and this. Or I could do a best of... oooh, maybe I will, but I'll save that for a time when I'm really hurting for content.

The angle I want to take on this one relates directly back to that first post. Interestingly enough, I still have my Camry-flattened Cladaugh in my jewelry dish in the bathroom and just the other day I was looking at it, thinking about where my head was one year ago and where it is today. And I think all of you are ready for an update on New Friend.

To recap, last year Cladaugh, or my love life, was mutilated in a freak hit-and run-accident in the office parking garage. Me equals distraught. Last month, I started hanging out with New Friend--was there life after the incident with the Camry in the garage. I was beginning to think, "Yes!" and then New Friend gave me a wonderful birthday present, the news that he was dating other people. Just what I asked for! How did he know that's what I wanted?

While I had suspected early on that maybe he had been out on a date or two with other people, it was really only the psycho gremlin inside my brain that was working on convincing me this was the case. Determined not to believe her crazy talk, I tried to remain confident that he was only dating me, let's just say I made some assumptions based upon where we were and previous relationship history. In my mind we had reached a point where we were exclusive, so this definitely caught me off guard.

I spent the better part of the week trying my best to silence my overactive and over imaginative gremlin. Some days were better than others. Mostly, I spent the week feeling like a victim, and becoming the bitter, single, woman who was devastated that her Cladaugh--and along with it any hopes of love, eternal wedded bliss, because it's all sunshine and roses, right--had just been symbolically annihilated. Much time was wasted on wondering about what was going on in New Friend's brain, and just who is this girl he's apparently dating. All this torturous daydreaming finally wore me down and made me realize that I had yielded my half of the power in this relationship to him and this "other" girl.

New Friend and I continued to hang out, because I really do like him--like him differently than any other Friends that have stood in his shoes previously--we just hung out in a different way. With gremlins like mine in the head, it was impossible to ignore that elephant in the room. But once I gave it a little more thought, I came to a great and powerful realization. One that is actually quite simple, I asked for what I needed (okay, and then in turn I made sure he knew what he was missing out on, that he really knew). As it turns out, that simple act can make you feel confident and amazing, and can make your New Friend like you even more (and an innocent little ninth-grade make out session helps a little bit there too). Just by defining my parameters (this is definitely material for an upcoming post), I completely turned the situation around and all but evicted my gremlins, or at least sent them off to a time-share in Greenland.

And, as more time has elapsed, things are becoming more clear. New Friend is only dating me (although, don't tell him I said that, he's free to think he's "dating other people" or at least has that option). This is the result of a self-defense mechanism for commitment reluctance, hey, I've got it too so I can relate. And I'm pretty certain New Friend is really into me--more than his phobia will allow him to admit. So he gets to work on that and I get to work on my patience. Apparently, it's a virtue--who knew?!

Now, as I work on my virtuosity, it is with the air and confidence that my love life may have suffered some injuries in last year's accident, it's healed and is in a better place now. One where I may even learn patience.

Marco... Marco...

Note to self: When you go MIA on your blog, be sure you let someone know so panic is averted.

I got an early morning instant message from FCA with a touch of urgency in the tone. Like a good friend, she was checking in to make sure everything was okay. Moreover, that I was actually alive. I guess that's what happens when you commit to your friend that you'll post three times a week and then you go silent.

Life has been crazy and full, and I'm exhausted. And truth be told, I just wasn't compelled to write anything last week, so consider yourself lucky that I didn't subject you to random dribble, words that I would have typed just for typing's sake.

This week is a huge one in terms of work, but I'm going to try resuming regular posting. We have a couple of major events--and things are going smoothly. Normally, there would be something for me to panic about, but I haven't found that yet. So that, in and of itself has me panicked. And all is right with the world.

And you know what else is right with the world? This fantastically awesome sketch from SNL. If your mother made you watch episodes of Lawrence Welk as a child, because it was good wholesome family entertainment, then you will certainly enjoy the next four minutes as much as I (and, yes, Angie O, I mean you).