Windy Wednesday…

As I sit here in the dark morning, the wind is howling outside my windows…yikes!  It isn’t even November yet!  Temps are “normal” but with wind chill figured in, the meteorologist this morning said to take a warm coat.

Speaking of warm, I have had a sharp, throbbing pain in my right center right buttock (how’s that for convaluted sentence structure?) on and off for days.  I woke up this morning and limped around for the first few minutes.  I’m sitting on my heating pad and ahhhhhhhh….it feels so good.  Don’t know if the pinched nerve thing is feeling any better, but I have a toasty warm butt!

Lines, lines, lines…it is so hard to learn lines by myself.  I normally tape-record myself reading everyone’s lines and listen non-stop to and from work.  But I just can’t get it done this time, so I have been living with my script in my hand…wherever I go, there goes my script.  I want my old brain back!!!!!  I live in constant fear that I will have one of those completely blank moments onstage that strike me more frequently in real life…that moment where your brain knows the word, but your mouth can’t say it…you just stand there trying to spit it out…and when you can’t the world just stops and improv flies out the window.  The fear of having that happen makes it happen, I fear.  This just pisses me off.  I finally have time and energy to act agin and I can’t remember my lines (or I worry that I won’t).  Sigh…

Speaking of scripts, I will be wearing a wig in this play…the first time I have ever worn a real wig, onstage or off.  I think it will be my hair in two or three scenes and the wig in two or three.  Since the subject was raised at rehearsal, my mind has taken a fancy to the notion.  I was on a wig website yesterday to pick my Clairee wig and was completely overwhelmed with choices.  I’m tempted to buy a couple of wigs for myself and see if I can change my look every now and again.  Hmmmm….too weird?

OK, I have started this last paragraph three times and each time, backspaced over what I wrote.  Just a reflection, I guess, of the fractured state of my early-morning brain.  Time to get up and make like a real grown-up.

Monday morning, can’t trust that day…

It is so dark in the mornings these days.  Normally, I am a morning person…early to bed, early to rise. But, a combination of late-night baseball playoffs/World Series, menopausal middle-of-the-night wakefulness and the early-morning darkness, I do not want to get out of bed.  Woe is me!

Rehearsals for Steel Magnolias are going well.  I still have LOTS of work to do on a couple of transitional lines that never cease to escape me at the right moment.  But those moments that really work, those in which I can really start acting because the lines are comfortable…that is where the magic lies.  I need more, more, more…

Steel Magnolias

I’m still debating my choice of Verizon Wireless phones, as my two years are up in November and I get a steep discount on a new phone.  I’m currently pondering the merits of the LG Dare vs. LG Voyager vs. Blackberry Storm…my next cut of research will be how much each actually costs to use.  I have already ruled out what would otherwise have been my first choice, the IPhone, because I just don’t want to give up Verizon.  Any thoughts?

I’m stalling…

It is 9:30am on Saturday and I should be outside staining the repaired trim work P just finished.  Instead, I am wallowing in kittens (asleep on my legs), watching FoodTV, trying to let the caffeine and Focalin kick in.  Naughty me…

This has been a tough week, workwise.  I work for a real estate lawyer (we also do some corporate and quite a bit of estate planning)…LOVE solo practice.  We rent space in an old, converted house.  A law firm has the first floor, three solo women attorneys (we are one) share the second floor.  Early this week, the guy from downstairs came up to tell my boss that he was getting out of his lease and trying to find a smaller, less expensive space.  Then, one of our floormates told us she was leaving as of the end of this month…moving to work out of her house to cut down on expenses.  The coup de grace was when my boss asked if I could reduce my hours…she and I have been friends for 13 years+, I have worked with her for 5+ years and she was teary-eyed.  I have been waiting for this and told her I could figure out a way to make do with 30 hrs/week.  We’ll try that, see what happens.  But the word among real estate attorneys around here is that we will be hurting for a while yet.  Ouch ouch ouch.

On the positive side, P is probably home for another week or so.  Rehearsals for Steel Magnolias are going well.  The rotted sills and trim on the outside of the house are looking much healthier.  My kids are happy, healthy and gainfully employed.  A friend is taking a new job, which should mean good things for her work life.  The kittens continue to be an overwhelmingly wonderful joy to us.  And Buddy (f/k/a Pope) is accepting them as much as a huge 13yo+ brusque male maine coon can accept annoyingly eager balls of color.

Oh, well, duty calls.  Time to slip into my jeans and head outside to stain.  Happy Saturday, all!

P.S.  YIPEE!  I didn’t have to Kilz or stain because he still had more building to do.  So I have moved back inside to catalogue more of my theater-related books (I am almost up to 300 and I have at least that many more to do).  We’re on our way out now to pick up more trim…much more fun!

More kittens…

We are still hopelessly, shamelessly in love with Puck and Phoebe…they are now almost 3 months old and are still full of kittenish bounce and frisk.  As they get older, though, we approach the moment that makes me very nervous…reopening the cat door to the basement which is open to the outdoors.  I grew up out in the country in desert Southern California in a house full of cats and dogs.  It would never occur to anyone to have an indoor cat.  Cats belonged outside, chasing gophers and horney toads.  Over the past 34 years, my husband and I have had a series of cats, most of which have been indoor/outdoor cats.  So, imagine my surprise when I approach this next step with such trepidation.  They are still so little…totally frisky and fearless and little.  We started off with supervised outings on the porch…moved on to letting them descend the stairs to the lawn…then sighed when they first found the cat door, and then almost immediately found the secret step up to the open well window and out into the wide world.

It’s like having kids…you start out with the confines of their world being wherever you are.  Gradually they grow up and away and hopefully your good parenting helps them find their way once they take that big step out the door.  But it sure isn’t easy to watch them walk away…or, in the case of Puck and Phoebe, frisk away!

Ahhhhhh…

I LOVE autumn in New England.  I have a half hour drive from home to work, through woods and streams and fields.  The leaves are turning, the corn fields are harvested and full of canada geese, and every now and again I spot a family of deer strolling across a grassy meadow.  The smell of burning leaves and wood stoves permeates the air…I drive in with my windows wide open so I can breathe it in.  Ahhhhh…

Hump day…

Such an odd and confusing time right now.  I am a news hound and can’t seem to keep my eyes off the google news page and NYTimes page and my ears off radio and TV.  The various markets are, to put it mildly, adjusting downward, which means our retirement funds are adjusting downwards, as well; the market value of my house is floating in an atmosphere of who the heck knows what is going to happen next.  I am lucky to still have a job, as I work for a solo practitioner who specializes in real estate law (purchases and sales are the most fun).  My husband and kids are fortunate to have fairly secure jobs, but you never know.  The price of gas skyrocketed, and has just recently dropped again.  Our grocery bill hasn’t risen, but that is because our hungry, mid-20s son moved out and we eat more simply these days.  The presidential election process has been long and FULL of input…so many candidates, so much to absorb, then to have it distilled down to two (or, more accurately, four) candidates.  I’m not burned out yet, but a lot of my friends are.  I’m probably helped by the fact that I used to be a radio news person and the clang of the AP and UPI machines were music to my ears (and, yes, I am DEFINITELY dating myself, as those machines went the way of dinosaurs years ago).  These are such interesting times.