HAPPY BIRTHDAY

NO
Seriously?
really?


9 years?

This blog holds 9 years of my thoughts?





(I'm writing this in March 2013, knowing that this is coming and not wanting to wait to write this post... if I've accidently died since setting this to auto post in the future... um... sorry for creeping you out... and.. um.. I love you.)

they're baaaa-aack

It took two crunches before I realized what was happening.

It was so familiar, but so strange. A forgotten memory.

I was out for a walk down to the beach with my new lovely pup (story about the pup later) when I heard a crunch... felt a crunch. One more step and I felt and heard another.
It was the second crunch that did it.
I looked down immediately, knowing I'd have to tread carefully.

Mass snail exodus.

Snails... everywhere.

I counted eleven more in the four yards before the beach.
So gross.

that sticky noise when you step in a puddle

I started running again last week.
I've been hurting all over anyway, so I figured if I started running now.. the pain would all get lumped together and it wouldn't matter.

I forgot how much I love it. And hate it.

Anyway, walking is too slow. I get frustrated. But my body isn't back in shape enough to run at the speed that I want/need.

Today was a 12 hour shift. I had to cancel my Uke lesson (there goes my spending money) in order to stay at the group home when a coworker called in sick. Yes I make more money at the group home than with lessons, but only if I'm paid at my contract rate... I won't go into the details, but basically this just makes me want to go for a LONG run.

Except that I've been wearing those running shoes for more than 13 hours today and my feet smell like a swamp.

I'm going to bed instead.

In pieces

This morning I staggered into the bathroom and sat down... Then looked at my legs in horror.

I'm covered in dime sized bruises from my knee to my thigh. My sleep crusted eyes and foggy brain couldn't process what I was seeing, so I just stared.

After a few seconds I woke up enough to realize what it was that I was seeing.

During the show last week there were so many funny moments, and so many touching moments... that I would forget why I was there. I'd be lost in the story lines of the other actors within the first few seconds that they'd take the stage. I'd roar with laughter over and over no matter how many how many times I heard their parts... and I'd tear up, and openly weep during others. Then I'd spend the first 15 seconds I was on stage trying to remember who my character was... trying to regroup from what I'd just watched.

When we actually started the show for an audience I realized that I needed to keep myself in check. I couldn't sit and cry through the touching piece before I went on stage, I needed to isolate myself... my character from the other story lines so I could fully be my own character. I needed a distraction that would bring me back to my seat- out of the story being played out in front of me....

I took to jamming my thumbs into my thigh muscle.

I should likely come up with some other method for the future.

More Work Than a Puppy

A few months ago my friend Heather came to my door.
It was a Wednesday night, 9:30ish. She had papers in her hands.

"You didn't come to the auditions"

"No, I decided that it wasn't something I was ready to do.. and I'm just really trying to protect my time, and I feel like I'm busy all the time. I want to be able to spend time with people... not commit to something else. And... it's a monologue. I've never done a monologue! I can't do one! That's scary stuff!"

I was totally making excuses.

"But I saved one just for you... it's the shortest one... and... I think that you're the right person to do it!"
She hands me the papers.

"but.. uh. oh. but. Well, come in... do you want some tea? I'll read it, but I'm not promising anything."


We sat down, sipped tea.. visited... and then Heather asked me to read it out loud.
I could barely read it out to her.... I started blushing on the first line.
The words on the pages were not words that I say out loud.... hardly ever.

And then she sucker punched me.

"if you do it, we'll get to hang out every week, just us... for a little bit each week, and we can make it fit with your schedule... so it's like the best of both worlds, you'll get to do a show, and have time with me!"

deep down

I'm in a play that's wrapping up today.
A series of monologues called "More Work Than a Puppy".

I've tapped into an emotion (Anger) that I don't often use. Anger scares me. I've seen a lot of it around me, and in my teen years spent too much time on the receiving end to be comfortable with it. Not that anyone is ever comfortable with anger.. just that I've seen the rage and have been so terrified by it, that I fear who I'd be if I ever allowed myself to face it head on.

My character in this show loses her shit on a man... like... LOSES HER SHIT. Friends who've seen the show have come to me after and said they're a little afraid of me, that they've never seen me get mad at someone in the first place, so seeing this rage is almost too much. I have to remind them I'm acting.
Am I acting?
Does this live in me?

Pulling this from within me has felt So Good. After each show I can't stop laughing, I'm giddy, I'm ... probably ready to take on anything... I'm ... ready to lose my shit on whoever deserves it. Is that me?
And pulling this from within me has also made me so aware of each and every emotion on a ridiculous level. I'm already hypersensitive to emotions from other people, and now I'm hypersensitive to my own? This is messy.

pumpkins

I have GOT to stop watching strange programs/ reading about strange programs before going to bed.

Currently I'm suffering through "4400". The acting. oh... dear... the acting.... But, the story line is great.  It's kind of like watching a train wreck though... the acting. I can't look away.

Anyway last night's dream:

Somehow I was sucked back in time while shopping in Zellers,  into a Theatre where someone was attacking my male counterpart, we escaped through a series of doors that we choose from a rolladex type thing holding doors, and then set up our lives together, eventually falling in love.. having babies... all in sort of a 50's/medieval time period... because those exist.
Eventually we'd saved up enough Canadian Tire money that we could give a try on the good old time machine installed on the wall above a bench in the community centre. The idea was "if you put the right number of bills in the machine in the right order, gold lego bits will spew out. When that happens, collect them up because you'll need the money to restart your life back in your own time period. Then enter in the documents/letters of request into the machine and it'll decide wether to grant you access to the future." BUT. We were living undercover, so my date showed up and asked me what I was doing (while my husband and children and the towns people milled about).. because living undercover means you should be dating someone? Um.. side note: My date was a guy named Tom that I went to grade school with.
Anyway, I turned to my husband, rolled my eyes and said "I'm just going to tell them" and yelled at my date, "We're aliens from the future and we're trying to get back home". Obviously my date left. The towns people all faked shock and acted like they were going to get on their horses and stab us with their jousting poles ... but instead everything went foggy and the time machine thing transported us all outside.
Now the stupid thing was in a giant pumpkin that I had to crawl into to try to feed it the last of our documents, but at least you can cut open a pumpkin, so I used a scalpel and just cut into it to get a note that said "he is the key". We all turned and looked at the littlest baby.... he smiled... and WOOSH, we ended up in my dad's living room back in the future.

The rest of the dream was kind of boring... explaining to people why I was suddenly married with several children.


There was way more detail about the pumpkin that isn't worth sharing to make the story work... like how we had to re-cut the jock-o-lantern's smile larger so I could get my arm in, or the way I basically performed surgery on the pumpkin so no one would know I'd bypassed the system. And the strange things that were inside plugging up the machine.

I could use a real life nap.

April

Ok, it's April.. I can get writing again now right?

When I started this blog, it was to save me from sending home bulk emails (which tended to bounce back and be annoying) while I was in Togo. This weekend I got to see my Togo family!

The Friesen's second daughter Beth got married in Niagara-on-the-lake... it was lovely.
And seeing the entire family (and some of the other girls from Kara) all grown up was just wonderful.

What else this weekend? Um, everything I own is broken... (it feels like) but there was an Easter miracle and my cousin is giving me his old car... I still don't even know what to do with that information, other than crying in a grateful puddle.

Last night, weird dreams about renting giant buildings with terrible carpets and strange passageways/doorways...  with too many people as room mates and kissing men I shouldn't be kissing. Just a normal night in dream land.

foot in mouth... if you have a foot

I was at Lula Lounge this week... and on a trip to the ladies' room I was hit with a memory that nearly made me wet myself.

But I was in the washroom already, so it wasn't a problem.


I don't know if you've ever experienced the stalls in the women's washroom at Lula... They're of the tiny variety, the sort where you have to straddle the toilet in order to open the door. We've all been in washrooms like that.

Last time I was at Lula, I was feeling good, I'd been dancing up a storm... so I was chatty. (note to future self: no one likes a chatty bathroom stranger/friend) Chatty self remarked as she was closing the stall door "hey, you could lose and appendage on these doors".

Chatty self became much less chatty on washing hands afterwards with her fellow washroom goer... fellow washroom goer had only one hand to wash.

True story.

Annnnnnnddddd

We're back.

(the Royal "we")

Funny choice of words last week "I need to catch my breath". Two days later I was hit with what I thought were allergies, but had to concede it was the sick.