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loving right now

A mish-mash for you. Right now, I am loving ………

This television:

~ The Walking Dead. Yes, okay, a show about zombies. MB and I are watching it on Netflix which means we’re behind and have to wait until God knows when to see the current (or rather, just ended) season. I wonder if it’s odd that I basically emailed my friend Cara a while back telling her, “I watch this show about rotting zombies and think of you” because we both have a weird zombie affinity. Who wouldn’t want a friend to tell her that? It’s a Hallmark sentiment is what it is. Lovely. Seriously, though, loving that show. Yes, it’s kind of gross, which I think means there’s something a bit off about me, but we pretty much knew that already.

~ Smash. You know, I grow weary of the theatre snobs (and I am one) who whine about this show and say, “Oh, but it’s not really like that or this or that.” Of course not and so what? And crime scene investigations aren’t like CSI(s) and doctors aren’t like House and high school isn’t like Glee. These are dramas, fantasies, pretend. Pretend. There are elements of truth in any well-done fiction, but fiction by definition means invention, so it’s difficult for me to understand the pinchiness and snootiness about the show except that it’s pinchiness and snootiness simply for the sake of being pinchy and snooty which I find a total bore. Criticize Smash because it doesn’t work as a show, in your opinion, but don’t criticize it because it’s not “real” enough for you. It’s not reality television (which isn’t “real” either). It’s not a documentary. It’s a TV drama/fantasy and Broadway’s image or success won’t be tarnished by it. Broadway thrives or struggles entirely apart from Smash. Actually, it may even make fans of the show want to see more live theatre. Courtesy of the great Marc Shaiman, Smash has some really wonderful original songs being staged like Broadway musical numbers. I love that the show is doing that because it ups the wow factor. It shows, in small bits, just how great, how thrilling musical theatre can be. Come see us. Here’s a peek at what you get. And what’s wrong with that? I think that’s fantastic for Broadway. I’ve seen so many comments from average viewers saying, “Are they actually ever going to produce this Marilyn musical on Broadway?? I totally want to see it!” — that kind of thing. So how is that a bad thing for Broadway? Don’t poo poo just to poo poo, ya pooers. Frankly, I think Katharine McPhee, who rubbed me a bit wrong as herself on American Idol, is a revelation as someone else in this show. She glows. She soars. That girl is becoming every inch the star. And Megan Hilty as Ivy, her nemesis? Va-va-va-voooom. Sex goddess with a voice to match. Frankly, I don’t care what they’re doing. I don’t care how “real” or “unreal” it is. I am gobbling it up.

This movie:

~ Pearl Fryar, the self-taught topiary artist who singlehandedly transformed not just his own yard but his neighborhood and his little struggling Southern town too. A Man Named Pearl is a must-see documentary. We watched a week ago and just fell in love with him, his spirit, his passion, his sweetness. He had a 3-minute instruction on topiaries at a nursery. That is the extent of his training. What he created from there …… well, it really needs to be seen to be believed. The man is a true artist but a true gentle spirit too — a gentle man and a gentleman. No ego there. Just the pure joy of creation. That’s what pours from him. His topiaries are not elephants and giraffes, either. They’re complex organic shapes created with nothing more complicated than a hedge trimmer. Amazing. It’s one of my favorite things: to see what someone has inside of them made manifest in time and space. This work is what’s inside Pearl Fryar. I loved seeing how his neighbors caught the topiary bug as well, shaping their bushes and hedges and trees into their own little topiary visions with Pearl’s help and tutelage. At one point in the film, he says that is his favorite thing — seeing what others are creating, seeing them catch the spark as well. Now that’s creative generosity. He has no investment in being the “only one” doing this. It’s about the act of creation, not his creative ego. Creativity is meant to be shared, not hoarded, and Pearl openly shares his. He makes his gardens available for viewing 5 days a week. You can give a donation — or not. He’s frequently seen out in his yard, chatting up the tourists who come by, answering their endless questions. During one visit, he even promises one wide-eyed little boy that he can come be his apprentice when he gets a little older. He goes and talks about his work at local colleges to rapt eager students. His work has made him a celebrity and taken his town from Nowheresville, USA to Southern tourist destination, but that doesn’t change Pearl at all. He’s still out in his yard every day, often until after the sun goes down, trimming and shaping and tending to his passion. This is a man whose passion makes him focused but generous too. It’s not something he owns, you see? It’s something bigger than himself and he understands that, so it’s something he gives back easily and with an open hand.

Also, there’s this: Dude was 66 when the movie was made (about 6 years ago) and, well, he’s hot. The local garden club ladies drive up in buses to tour his yard, get out, take a gander at him, and comment on his hotness, flushed and flustered by the nearness of this gentle manly man. It’s hilarious. His wife just rolls his eyes, understanding that in this way, she needs to share him. This whole crazy thing is bigger than both of them, but they take it all in with graciousness and equanimity and good humor. Beautiful people. Beautiful work. A truly inspiring film.

This, on the home front:

~ Banshee Boy dances to the opening refrain of “Under Pressure” (or “Ice, Ice, Baby” — if you must). All it takes to get him going is to hum that opening “do do do dodo do doon” and he’s smiling and, quite literally, shaking his be-diapered booty. He also does a mean march/toddle/kick box to “Happy Jack.” It’s a pretty big kick he’s worked into this routine, and I really don’t know how he doesn’t fall down doing it, but apparently, that kid is alls about the rhythm. He’s crazy for it.

~ He goes to bed with 3 pacifiers. One in his mouth and one in each hand. You can watch him on the video monitor (how do parents get any sleep with that?) and see him sit in his crib, rotating them from hand to mouth in regular succession, until he falls unconscious from the sheer exhaustion of “passy” management.

~ He can’t say Tee Tee yet, so for now, I am Tuh Tuh. As long as this doesn’t morph into Ta Ta — which I can feel a’comin’ — I am fine with it.

Tuh Tuh out.

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“i hope i get my raisins from fresno!”

We went to see Original Banshee in The Music Man on Saturday night. Now, last year, she was Gretl in The Sound of Music and this year she was a River City Kid — basically the chorus — and that was a bit hard for her, initially, going from a bigger part to a smaller part. Then again, that’s the nature of the game. You don’t always get the big part. There’s not always even a big part FOR you. There are really only 2 small non-chorus parts for little kids in The Music Man — one is for a little boy and one is for a girl, about 11 or 12 years old. Original Banshee is an 8-year-old girl. So wrong gender, wrong age. But what are you gonna do? You want to be in the show, you play the part they give you. That’s the way it works.

And she did, that girl. She played it to the bone. She did so well in rehearsals, the director ended up giving her a few extra lines, a few extra “bits,” and a tiny solo in “The Wells Fargo Wagon” — which she belted to the rafters — “I hope I get my raisins from Fresno!!!”

Which is clearly why she looks so manic here. She is hoping for her raisins from Fresno, pippa! No one could possibly be calm in the face of such anticipation!

She jumped up and belted out that solo and the audience laughed and laughed, I think because she’s just so little and just so LOUD.

We did catch her, once, scanning the audience, looking for us it turns out. (I mean, she is only 8, after all.) But that one glance was all it took. She went backstage and announced to her dad/my brother, “Tee Tee and Uncle Beloved are 4th row center.” And we were. She’s a smart little stinker.

But, you know, it’s good for her to learn at this early age that the theatre world is fraught with joys and disappointments, highs and lows, and what you think should obviously come to you may not actually come to you and that you sometimes have to make the most of something less than hoped for or something less than what you had the last time. You will be passed over for valid reasons or stupid reasons. You won’t always get what you believe you deserve.

Just play it to the bone, leave nothing in the green room, and you will shine; big light or small light, you will shine.

With or without your raisins from Fresno.

That’s what ol’ Tee Tee will tell her.

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the kid is p.r.e.s.e.n.t.

Okay. One of two things is happening here:

Either the Wells Fargo wagon’s comin’ down the street OR she is going off the rails on a crazy train.

(Whatever it is, the middle girl is only vaguely interested and the right-hand girl is wondering where her mom is sitting. The levels of engagement in this photo are cracking me up.)

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Original Banshee (left) in The Music Man which we see tonight!

Banshee, I love you. But you are popping a neck vein and I’m very concerned.

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:-(

Since I now work from home, I think I’m losing track of the workings of the real world. I really do. True, my grip on how the world works has never been exactly vise-like to begin with, let’s face it, but now it feels like sands through an hourglass. Like I’m becoming mentally incontinent. That’s right. Incontinent. Not incompetent, although I’m always willing to consider there’s an element of that, but mentally incontinent. As if any kind of understanding of basic real world interactions just seeps right out of me even when I don’t expect or want it to.

So either I just don’t understand things on a basic intelligence level OR I think about things that other people don’t think about but wouldn’t understand either if they did OR I’m slowly becoming mentally incontinent.

Because here’s a weird thing I don’t get and don’t know how to handle. I think it’s a uniquely “female” thing, too, mainly because I don’t know any men who act this way or, rather, I don’t want to know any men who act this way. But this little scenario has happened to me a few times in the last year and I want it to stop because, frankly, I don’t want to deal with it. So it boils down to this: I just need people to be different so I can crawl back into my Howard Hughes hidey hole. Simple schmimple.

The scenario (culled from a couple of similar scenarios):

Let’s say you have a cyber acquaintance and you occasionally email on a personal but not-too-deep level. (I am not referring to anyone who reads this blog.) A few months go by with no communication between the two of you. Out of the blue, acquaintance emails asking why there’s been no communication and you’re put on the spot. Now again, the noncommunication has been mutual. She’s not communicated with you; you’ve not communicated with her. During these few months, you haven’t had a single thought about “why” there’s been no communication, but now that it’s put in front of you, courtesy of the acquaintance, you stop and think about it and come to the conclusion that it’s probably just been real life getting in the way. It’s not something you’re necessarily looking to dissect or diagnose or ….. blame. You literally have not thought a single moment about any “why” at all — until now, when you’re forced to do so. And that’s the irritation of it: Why are we women so quick to assume there’s an issue in this kind of scenario? Why does it need to be discussed AS IF there is an issue? And why is the noncommunication my fault when it’s been mutual noncommunication? Is it simply my fault because she brought it up?

And what do you do if the real answer to an annoying “Why haven’t we communicated?” is “Hell, I don’t know”?

Because, damn, I don’t know and “I don’t know” is not a good answer to give to a woman.

I know. I’m a woman.

So you write back, gently refusing to shoulder all the blame for the noncommunication, and say, “Well, now that I think about it, I imagine we’ve both just been busy.”

Both. Perhaps we’ve both been busy?

Don’t lay this all at my feet, peaches. Don’t play that game with me. See, because now you’ve gone and made me mad. I was going happily along, growing my corkscrew fingernails, doing my work, and BAM! my tissue-boxed feet are suddenly put to the fire — and that can’t have a good outcome, now can it? There was zero issue before and now, frankly, the issue is you’re irritating me. You’re making something out of nothing — which we dames are very good at and so, yeah, I’m tasting my own medicine and, boy, is it ever bitter — but besides that, you’re laying the blame for this non-issue entirely at my feet and all I want to do is kick it back in your cyber-acquaintance, wouldn’t-recognize-it-on-the-street face.

See, because now you’ve gone and made me mad with your non-issue but I can’t tell you I’m mad because there wasn’t an issue but NOW there is, and I can’t tell you that and still seem sane.

I cannot stand mind games. I hate them. Please don’t make me play them because I’m bad at them and, besides, I just don’t like being that …. person who plays mind games.

And, again, is this necessarily an issue? Sometimes it is, but sometimes it isn’t. When you’re mostly just acquaintances at best, when you haven’t shared all that deeply with each other, why would you create this kind of issue where one may not even exist? Why go digging for an issue with, again, an acquaintance? Why do you assume that an acquaintance should have that level of ….. I don’t even know what word to use ….. accountability to you?

I don’t get it. I really don’t.

Another scenario:

Since I work from home, my colleagues are cyber colleagues. I’ve gotten to know a few of them and we IM back and forth during the day, sometimes with chit-chat, but mostly with work-related questions. Recently, at day’s end, I IM’d one of them to tell her to have a good evening or something and she wrote back, “I haven’t heard from you all day” complete with a frowny face emoticon.

Oh, for God’s sake.

I don’t know what was more annoying to me: the thought or the frowny face accompanying the thought. I was simply minding my own business, literally, but, still, my grade for the day? 🙁

You know, I could have said the same thing but the difference here is that I didn’t and I wouldn’t. I was busy working. I assumed she was busy working. It wasn’t personal. It didn’t mean a thing, my silence, and I assumed hers didn’t either.

Look, I’m as capable as the next woman of feeling insecure in my female relationships. I’m guilty too, so I don’t want seem like I’m somehow above the insecurity fray. I’m not. But this kind of thing — where there’s mutual silence, where there’s nothing that you’re expressly waiting/hoping for a response about — well, I try to avoid frothing about that. I’m very good at frothing, as evidenced by 99% of this blog, but it’s exhausting and it wears down the batteries, so I’m really trying to limit that in my life now. I have died on way too many hills in my life and it’s getting expensive to keep disposing of the body.

Since I got to be the one to try to smooth over another something from nothing, I said basically the same thing to this woman that I’d said to the other, something like, “I guess we’ve just been busy today!”

I did not apologize to either of these women because I didn’t feel that I owed an apology in either situation although I did feel like one was being fished for. I’m a funny girl, I guess. I don’t like feeling manipulated into believing a mutual noncommunication is solely my fault or that there’s even any blame to be assigned at all, so nope, no apology for you, Crackie.

Some things are just more complicated with cyber relationships. You can’t see a face and glean meaning from expressions. You can’t hear a voice and glean meaning from tone or inflection. It’s harder and trickier. But since that is the case, and especially when we’re dealing with acquaintances, just leave well enough alone. Assume the best. Don’t go digging for nothings. Don’t assume a closeness or accountability that’s not there. Don’t lay blame that isn’t deserved for scenarios that don’t even exist.

And, most importantly, unless you’re my mother, don’t send me frowny faces about my behavior, ‘mkay?

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unbearable

Original Banshee, on the left, “playing” the trumpet. She opens in The Music Man next weekend. Cannot wait to see it.

Look at her, shooting joy out of the corners of her eyes.
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I seriously can’t bear it. I laugh/cried my way through The Sound of Music last year when she played Gretl. (I have yet to even write about that evening but I intend to.)

It sounds, well, egotistical to say, I suppose, but there were moments when she was onstage when I literally saw myself in her. I’ve noticed it before in her and MB has too. She was only 7 last year, the youngest Von Trapp kid in the play, but she stole that show. I know, I’m her aunt. I would think that, right? But I’m also an actress and I know when someone is stealing the show. That kid has a presence onstage but also knows how to BE present onstage. No one has taught her that. It’s just something she already has. Some of her expressions onstage, the way she uses her eyes, I …. saw myself.

No, she’s not my daughter; she’s my niece, but I guess it makes that childless and wounded part of my heart hurt less to see a little bit of me live on in her.

I think I’m allowed to see that, just a little bit, aren’t I?

(Also, whoever decided to give the littlest kid in the photo the biggest instrument, good job. It works. It’s funny.)

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just now

ME: Hm. I was hoping for more comment from you on that.
HE: Huh??
ME: I said, “I was hoping for more comment from you on that” and you said “Huh??”

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random snippets

ME: So I’m at the eyeroll part of the book. Did you know that demons all have names?
HE: I did not.
ME: They do and you’re supposed to use their names when addressing them.
HE: So you can’t just say “Attention, demon of lust” or something?
ME: No. You’d have to call him by name. Like, “Attention …. Naughty Jurgen!”
HE: “Naughty Jurgen”?
ME: Well, I don’t know what the hell his name is.

_______________

ME: I did not know how to comfort her. It’s a bunny.
HE: What’s wrong with it?
ME: It has arthritis. It gets laser treatments for arthritis.
HE (pause): That’s like getting veneers for a hamster.

_______________
IMing on the job ……

SHE: Holy Christmas! “Ate some old cold meats from a safe.” What the f**k does that mean? A safe? who puts meat in a safe?!?!?
ME: Who did? The patient?
SHE: Yep, the patient… old meat in a safe.
ME: A SAFE?
SHE: Yep, that’s what doc said… a safe.
ME: So did it make him run amuck in a murderous frenzy afterwards? (ed. reference to earlier conversation)
SHE: I was wondering about that. Unfortunately, he only got abdominal pain… surprise, surprise… moron. You don’t eat meat from a safe.
ME: Advice of the day there, D: “You don’t eat meat from a safe.” I want that on a t-shirt.
SHE: That’s a facebook status right there.
ME: You should tell all your FB friends.
SHE: I’m gonna do that right now. Okay. I certainly did just make that my status.
ME: Sage advice. People need to know.
SHE: This guy is a dope! His wife’s a nurse! He didn’t know enough not to eat meat from a safe?
ME: Hahahaha. We cannot get over it.
SHE: NO, we CAN’T!

_______________
More IMing on the job …… sometimes voice recognition is an inexact technology ….

ME: So here’s what VR heard: “The patient has not responded to the multiple animals ordered by Dr. Larson.”
SHE: What did he actually say?
ME: Enemas. Not animals.
SHE: HA!
ME: And here I was picturing some nice little doctor bringing her puppies and kitties and bunnies to try to cheer her up.
SHE: WAY better than enemas.
ME: Tru dat, mama.

_______________
ME: Again, wrong, VR: “Patient wants to try to lose weight on heroin.”
SHE: ROFL.
ME: S/b “on her OWN.”
SHE: I should try that, though.

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in my inbox ………

“Fyi..tomorrow is “t” day for (Banshee Girl) at preschool! She decided on her own to take a picture of Aunt “T-T”…that’s the way she spelled it…because it would be a double “T”!”

(Signed, sister-in-law)

Because, pippa, obviously T stands for Tee Tee and all the little children need to learn this. Not tree or train or tomahawk.

Tee Tee.

Seriously, though, so cute.

(And, actually, Trace, the teacher might not like it if Banshee Girl were to bring in a tomahawk for T day, scaring the kiddos and all.)

On the other hand, who knows what that picture of me looks like??

I am now picturing all the little preschoolers sobbing into their mother’s arms at day’s end because of some horrible scary picture of “T-T.” Note to self: Fewer pictures of Tee Tee; more tomahawks.