Double Standard

The worst thing that can happen is getting fired.

OK.

I'm working in a school and it has me incredibly, soul-crushingly anxious.  I used to have mild panic attacks on the school bus every morning.  Not from the kids.  None of the kids bullied me.

Once, on a joint English/History research project where the two grades from each teacher would be averaged together the English teacher gave me an A.  The History teacher failed me.  For grammar and style choices.  The English teacher and I got along famously, she loved me and every word I wrote.  The History teacher and I were not so harmonious.  He had a habit of saying absolute bullshit, presenting it as fact, and then getting mad when I'd point out why it was wrong.

So, when he failed me, I took the paper and his rubric to her.  She looked at it.  "I did my dissertation on style and punctuation.  I will take care of this."  And she did, and I am forever grateful, but I will never really know why it still broke her heart when I told her I wasn't going in to teaching.

It's incidents like these that make me wonder why teachers sabotage students.

A director I respect has three children, I am the same age as the middle child.  My brother is the same age as the youngest child.  My brother, the oldest child, and the youngest boy and I were all involved in theatre in the same school with the same drama teacher.  The youngest boy was cast as the lead in the musical his senior year.  My brother was cast in a minor bit part in the second act.  Neither my brother nor I ever had lead roles in school.  This director has cast my brother in major roles a couple of times.  We were discussing this high school musical nostalgically, well, sort of.

"All I remember was we had to go sit through it because he was in it."
He was the lead, right?  I was only there because my brother was in.
"Oh, wasn't he the comedic lead?"
No.  He never got cast in a lead in high school.
"Your brother?"
Nope.  Our parents weren't anybody, why do you think the drama teacher would have cast either of us as leads?
"You know, it took me much longer than you to figure out that's how that worked."

I paused to Google something and came across the statistic that schools are hoping for 100% reading proficiency by grade 3.  The first time I read this, I recoiled in shock and horror and thought, "you mean these days, they're not even capable of reading in 3rd grade yet?" and then I remembered the high school freshmen I work with.  Of the 30, students that were interested in being in speech and drama, so, kids who like language in one form or another, one of them reads excellently.  Most of them read like they're reading, and three of them, boys, still sound like graduates of the Shatner School of Dictation.

As much as anything, this probably explains why teachers were wary of me, they assumed I was cheating, and I showed many of them every little bit of my complete contempt.  They were used to holding the power that comes of being the adult in the room with the answers, and it was very easy for me to wrest it from them.  So I found myself in battles with adults for my educational career.

If I hadn't had the benefit of other teachers willing to go to bat for me occasionally, I'd almost being to assume that it was hysterical grandiose paranoia.  It sounds like it, when I think of how often teachers lost my papers, confused my work with the work of other students.  Twice, I was failed for projects that later wound up in displays picked by librarians as "the best" in the class.  My friend and I had the same English teacher in different hours and he didn't know we knew each other.  She got As, I got Cs.  For a poetry writing assignment, I wrote her poem and mine.  They were practically the same poem, if he'd known we knew each other, or actually bothered to read the piece, he probably would have called it plagiarism.  I got a C.  Hers poem by me was deemed the best he'd ever seen, she should write more just like this one.

"What do you do for a hobby?"

I blinked.  I paused.  I looked up the definition of hobby.  Yep, that word still limits itself to activities done regularly, in spare time, for pleasure.

I read, I write, I consume media, I look things up.  I describe most of my work in exactly the same way.

I play the violin, once or twice every two to three years.  I burned out on photography when I quit the portrait studio job three years ago.  I sew, when I have to.  I rode a horse ten years ago.  I go hiking when given the opportunity and someone to go with.  You don't tell someone you just met that you ramble through graveyards.  I can both draw and paint but have done neither regularly in six years.  I bake, when the kitchen is clean and I have all the ingredients and I feel like it, so I've not done any baking in two years.  I play no sports.  I don't exercise.

I like all these things.  I like many things.  I lack the desire or motivation to do any of them because, well...  I suspect because my emotional energy has been wrapped up in other things, and my basic drive to accomplish anything has been work related.

I'm not sure what this makes me.

No, That's Not Sketchy At All

 "Do you have co-worker's phone number?  We need to contact her about a problem.  We have tickets listed for this person, but they're unpaid, and there's no address or phone number attached."  

I have her email address.  

I have her phone number too, but, no, I'm not giving it to you.  We're a business, and if you need it, you can look it up and call her.  Because I recognise this, this is passing the buck on a problem that should have been solved a week ago and she still doesn't want to do it herself.  

"Oh, well.  I guess the staff directory should have it.  I'll have to go look it up."  

When contacted, this meant nothing to her.  I went ahead and did a search for the name we don't have contact information for- sometimes phone numbers are publicly available.  

I can't find a phone number for him, but this is probably him on Facebook.  

"Oh!  Send him a message."  

He won't get it.  It'll go into his 'Other' messages.  

"No, no, that depends on how often he checks his messages."  

So, I'm supposed to send a total stranger a Facebook message about a business transaction that will appear to be from someone who isn't visibly associated with the business in any way?  Yeah.  Right.  

I think I'd be more comfortable if you could do that from the company's Facebook account.  

"I don't think I can do that.  I'll just send him a message personally."  

Humbug.

I'm a mess. I have a wonderful and encouraging best friend who is probably getting a little bit sick of my shit. So, I'm here instead of bothering him on Christmas Day.

 I wound up sobbing over Slings and Arrows.

 "You sit there thinking why isn't she in a real job? Why isn't she in a relationship? [...] Look, I know what you're gonna say. I've been very irresponsible up to now. I don't plan, I just react. I know that. You know what I think it is? What I'm afraid of? Deep down? That if I start being responsible, I'll stop being an artist. Isn't that ridiculous? [...] I am through with who I am right now. I hate who I am right now. I'm taking control of my life."

 Ellen doesn't, of course, but it's the first time I've ever related to her, and I kind of hoped I would never be able to. And it's not quite the same, the idea that responsibility would be an end to my creativity, because, really, when am I bothering to be creative lately, anyway?

 I'm trying to stay away from Facebook. And Twitter. But I know that if I do either of those things, I will talk to literally nobody for a while and I might get a little bit crazy. Crazier.

 What do I want? I want to be making up theatre with friends. I'm directing a fun script, an ensemble piece that I thought I would love directing as a reading, and it's going to be fun and fine, but, BUT, it's a piece to teach a cast how to do this kind of theatre. I don't want to teach people. I want to be there with people who know what they're doing.

 How far am I willing to go to get there? Am I willing to quit all my jobs, leave the house and start over someplace else entirely?

 For a sure thing, yes. For a chance? No.

Old Sinner

"'If I could work my will,' said Scrooge indignantly, 'every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.  He should!'"

There's nothing quite like sitting home and feeling miserable with nowhere to go, no way to get there if I had, and scrolling through a Facebook full of people wishing everyone else the best.  

And then I happened to look at my horoscope and get this:  "'Meupareunia' is an English word that refers to a sexual adventure in which only one of the participants has a good time. I'll be bold and predict that you will not experience a single instance of meupareunia in 2015. That's because I expect you'll be steadily upgrading your levels of empathy and your capacity for receptivity. You will be getting better and better at listening to your intimate allies and reading their emotional signals. I predict that synergy and symbiosis will be your specialties. Both your desire to please and your skill at giving pleasure will increase, as will your understanding of how many benefits you can reap by being a responsive partner. "

Which is another thing I didn't need to think about right now.  

I kind of want to stop existing for a little while.  

What Do I Want?

I've been wondering a lot about what I want to do with my life, so I Googled, "how do I figure out what I want to do with my life?"  

And I got given a bunch of questions that I can't really answer.  "What would you do if you had a billion dollars?"  I would pay off all the things I need to pay off, hand a chunk of money over to friends so they could pay things off and do theatre, then I would disappear for a few years.  When I got bored of the world, I'd come back to the theatre and do that until I got too old to be relevant.  

Which is wholly implausible and doesn't help me in the short term.  

But, it does address the problem succinctly.  I've got two warring impulses right now, and I don't see a way for either of them to be sustainable.  I want to be here, and everywhere.  I want to go away and still be able to come back again, and right now I can't do either.  

I took the chance to live here when I had it.  It's not a chance I'll get again, so I want to keep it.  

Hmmmm.  

A Tale Told By an Idiot

I should never go to see locally produced Shakespeare again.  It will only disappoint me.  We have laughably terrible, free, outdoor summer Shakespeare, and that's always a good time, because it's an easier environment in which to be snarky.  

This show was of a much higher caliber in terms of performance values, and the actors were better in that a couple of them knew how to make it look like they understood their lines.  Macbeth.  Banquo was pretty good.  Macbeth rushed all of his lines and got all of his stresses on the wrong syllable- I found myself counting when he talked.  What does that mean?  He didn't do the work.  An actor in Shakespeare who doesn't do the work pisses me off.  A director in Shakespeare who doesn't force an actor to do the work pisses me off more.  

The other, greater, trouble with it was that they didn't go to any trouble to pick an emphasis for the story, they just crapped out the script.  It wasn't a show *about* anything, so it couldn't craft its moments and create any kind of arc.  It's admittedly the kind of Shakespeare I aspired to even in college, because it was the kind that I was comfortable being in- phoney prancing around in crowns and capes and loving the sound of my own voice acting.  Since I don't really want to be in a dead play anymore, I do much better.  These days, I want to make Shakespeare live.  

Macbeth is a play about power and magic.  That's it.  The whole show is how those two elements bring about, well, Malcolm's rule.  Shakespeare's plays are totally about realism, ESPECIALLY the ones with magic in them- Hamlet, Macbeth, Tempest, all of them kind of have this universal message that fucking around with the supernatural is a BAD idea.  Midsummer both does and doesn't, because it's a comedy.  So you have this guy who goes from a soldier to believing he's fucking invincible because these witches keep telling him so, and the whole climax of the show is, "Oh really, ubermensch?  Did you know I'm your nemesis?"  Stab, slice, Hail King of Scotland.  That's the show; if every single aspect isn't working towards that reversal, the play is doing it wrong.  

Guess what this play did wrong?  

Lady Macbeth has an opening monologue where she goes on and on about how, basically, she wishes she wasn't a woman, because she wants to do man stuff- Beatrice says the same thing, Portia dresses in men's clothes- all the heroines of Shakespeare that women want to be are this way, they want to be dudes so they can actually participate in stuff.  You could make a Titania that would be badass, but she'd have to be kind of in to bestiality, or Bottom would have to be played for fewer laughs, and I'm not sure how that would go over.  

Anyway, Lady Maccers.  So, she literally uses the phrase "UNSEX ME," and then in the very next scene, then they blocked her to seduce Macbeth and be pissed off when he doesn't actually want to sex her because he's busy with other stuff.  Um.  No.  There's no subtext to support that.  At all.  Lady Macbeth gets what Lady Macbeth wants, and she gets EXACTLY what she wants.  That's why she fucking dies.  It's OK, you can do that if you want to.  This is Shakespeare, his copyright has ceased and that's the only reason to perform him, to bully the script into telling the story YOU want to tell, but you have to cut the lines that say the opposite of the point you're trying to make.  

And I know the whole show was a vanity project for Macbeth, which just makes his total ineffectiveness in the role sad.  I've seen him do good work elsewhere, but this guy simply stood and said lines and let the play happen around him.  I'd much rather put him in Much Ado and let him play Benedick- he's a comedic actor.

I don't know how to fix this production.  Sometimes I see shows and go, "this was right, this was right, and if you'd just done this, it would have been good."  This one...  you'd have to change the tenor of the show to something else to make it work, you couldn't leave any aspect of it and turn it into anything but a more uneven performance.  

But, this plainly pointed out that Shakespeare has terrible 4th acts.  Act 4 of Hamlet is the "Where did you hide the body, Hamlet?" act.  Act 4 of Romeo & Juliet is Juliet having to deal with her fiance and her parents before she kills herself- most people cut most of it.  Act 4 of Midsummer is "Where the hell is Bottom?"  All of them deal with the exploits of minor characters in relation to the main characters- 90% of which could be covered (and often is) in two lines at the beginning of the 5th act, or boiled down to one scene.  Was the bear baiting held between acts 3 and 4 and the audience wasn't paying any damn attention anyway?  Or was it so that the main character can have a drink and learn their lines for the finale?  Were they masking some kind of giant scene change?  

Shakespeare analysis done by English majors never, ever anticipates this crap.  They want to go on about language, and, no.  It's not done for language, it's done because you know what your company can do, and what they can't do, and so you play to those strengths and hide the weaknesses.  

I just came home and re-watched the last episode from the 2nd series of Slings and Arrows, which is a way more fun Macbeth.  

In Which I Have an Unpopular Opinion

Pretty sure that if you're creating a disturbance on privately owned, commercial property without prior permission or agreement with the property, and you don't leave when your ass is asked to leave, you should be arrested.

Maybe the protesters at the Minneapolis mall had an agreement with the mall.  I honestly don't know.  But, I have to ask, "what the fuck is the point of protesting at a goddamned mall?"  What did the mall do to you?  Go and protest on some government property, like the steps of a public building or in front of a police station.

Oh, you mean, it's Minnesota in December and it's cold?  Plus, it's Christmas, so the mall is full of normal American capitalists and you'll put on a better "show" there?  That's not noble, that's not pride, that's being a damn nuisance.

I recently watched a video with two policemen who shoot a bulldog in a trailer park.  I have no idea why these two men were called to deal with this, but from the video, some things were very clear:  both of those guys were under 25, neither of them had any experience with large dogs, and they were scared out of their minds.  The dog is a standard bull mix, and she's scared, too, and these guys have no idea what to do with her.  When they get freaked out by her freaked out behaviour, they shoot her.  They don't know what normal dog behaviour is, they don't know how to deal effectively with the dog, and they have guns.  That's a bad combination.  Maybe they thought the dog was rabid, or had been called on the basis that the dog might be.  I don't know, but their reaction in the face of fear is to shoot the thing that scares them.

Whether it's a dog or a person doesn't matter, that's not how anyone should be trained to use a weapon.

Until the Sun Comes Up Over Santa Monica Boulevard

On a whim, I did the math for "what would you do if you won 10,000,000" and that was fun.  Yesterday, I did the math for, "am I going to survive the next year?" and that was terrifying.

I work four "jobs."  I can make that sound noble or important or busy and I try to represent it like that to other people, but the truth of the matter is that I work 80 hours in a good month.  This is equivalent of food, gas, the utility bill, my student loan and my Internet.  Barely.  It doesn't include insurance of any kind, it won't even come near to allowing me to pay the mortgage, which is still laughably close to the rent on a one bedroom apartment with included utilities and cable.  

I allowed myself to be a dependent in my marriage.  That was a mistake.  But I didn't see it that way at the time- I thought I was building a community for myself and looking at a future where I was going to be a full time parent, and trusting the other person in my life.  All good things on paper.  But he was spending more than my entire paycheck on sex, and we were surviving.  We couldn't afford things like a second car, or a new car, or home maintenance or anything I wanted, but I was used to being poor and not spending money and not having any money, so I didn't realise where it was all going.  

This rant is courtesy of the fact that I discovered he's spending money on sex again, and, like before, it's almost exactly equal to what I made this month.  

I don't know what to do.  If I were to get a "real job," I'd have to quit everything else I do, but it would sustain me financially.  However, since I've picked up the three new jobs in the last three months, I'm loathe to do that.  I made a commitment to the work and they're all jobs I happen to like.  

I have no idea what's going to happen in a courtroom.  Both of us get screwed by choosing to divorce, and since I live in a no-fault state, the level to which I can be screwed in terms of "fair, but not equal" division is greater.  Right now, in my name, I have two wrecked cars and the title of the house, but not the mortgage, and I work 80 hours a month at four jobs.  If I lose the house, I'm screwed.  If I'm not awarded any kind of support, I'm screwed.  If I'm awarded the house and support and he doesn't pay it and I have to sue him, I'm really screwed.  

I don't know anything about health insurance.  Is it mandatory like automobile insurance, now?  

And the worst of it is, I can't tell anyone what's going on.  I offered not to tell anyone the real reasons we're divorcing, and all of them relate back to, "he spent 10,000 a year on his penis."  95% of our friends and relations don't even know we're divorcing, or that there's even a problem.  Because I spent the last two years pretending there hasn't been one, to myself, even.  

There are answers that allow me to become a responsible member of mainstream society and go about my life wishing I were dead.  I watched a friend kill his soul doing that while he was married.  I don't really want to do that single.  

There are answers that allow me to leave every part of my life behind and start over.  But they are entirely irresponsible or dependent on me being hired in another state for a full time job with benefits.

I'm so scared.  

Fascinating

So, I have an Internet dating profile.  It's a fascinating social experiment, honestly.  I've gotten several messages from various completely undesirable people that leave me wondering what on earth they were possibly thinking, and decided to ignore them.

I got one tonight from someone with no information- I knew he was single, male, and had a slightly creepy profile name, MurderDude (not his actual name, but it did have murder in it, and if you have "murder"in your name on a dating site, that's creepy, let's just agree).  I determined that he was probably new to the site, and engaging would frighten him off sooner than letting him bother me for days.  So, I asked him about his profile name.  It's an album by a band, he says.  I Google.  A Christian metal band.  Well, I know one thing right off: this guy hasn't read a damn thing about me.

"Can we talk, I don't like texting."  Yeah, no, guy about whom I know four things.  I explain I'm not comfortable with that.  "So, what, you don't talk to people on the phone before you meet them?"  And I realise that, no, I don't.  When I met the guy I married, I met him and his friend at the same time and saw both of them around, but didn't know which of them was which.  Both of them could be similarly described and always worked the same schedule, and when one of them contacted me over Christmas break by email and AIM, I had no idea which one he was until I met up with him in person a few weeks later when the semester started again.

MurderDude in the meanwhile has managed to text me a short treatise on the evils of texting and the iphone generation that leads me to believe he's probably not texting.  I ignore it, explaining that, nope, I'm not interested in phone or voice conversation with anybody I'm not good friends with, thanks, and that takes time.

"I wanna talk.  Now."

By now, of course, I've decided that MurderDude isn't interested in paying for a phone sex line and is looking for a free substitute, and I turn him down again, politely.

"Wow, I guess you're just not that interested in me, I'm sorry I even tried.  There's an epidemic of thirsty guys out there who want to get laid, why won't you talk to me?  What are you here for if you don't want to get laid: Internet friends?"  (Edited heavily for syntax, spelling and grammar, but his use of "thirsty" included because I had no idea what it means and had to Google to discover it meant desperate.)

Yes, that's exactly right, MurderDude.  It's amazing how you managed to pick up on that subtle hint, but thank you for proving my suspicion correct, that if I had called you, you probably would have tried to wordfuck my ear and then you would have had my phone number.

Except what I actually said was, "Oh, I'm sorry my intentions weren't clear in my profile, but Internet friends are just fine with me."  Suddenly, I see him pop up as viewing my profile, where it says I'm looking for platonic friends and not legally divorced and not looking to date anyone.  End of conversation.

Is that what these men are doing, then?  Assuming that everyone is online for exactly the same reason they are and all of the actual reading in the world isn't going to help?

Let me remember the valuable lesson learned here:  if it looks creepy, you're not obligated to engage.  Just don't.

Where Do You Usually Go to Be Insulted?

The best way to insure that I'm never, ever going to have a repeat of the procedure I've put off for my entire adult life is to chide me about it when I finally have it done.

From the nurse:
"You've never had this done?"
No.
"You're 30 years old."
Yes.
"Never?"
No.
*Huge sigh.*

From the doctor:
"And this is really the first procedure you've had?"
Yes.
"Ever?"
Yes.
"You're supposed to have them done every two to three years, it used to be every year.  Never?"
No.  There's a reason for that.
"OK.  Well, here you go, I'll be back."
What am I supposed to do now?  I thought we established I have no idea what takes place here?  Thanks a lot, people.

Also, I'd love to know why they're always asking if I'm fasting.  No, I'm not going to ask, they assume I know, and this is clearly the response to not knowing.

In my ideal world, medical visits would be performed by people who don't give two shits about being friendly.  I don't want to talk to you about my life, or your life.  I don't want a relationship.  I want you to tell me what's going on, be probed as necessary, and let me go.  No eye contact would be fine.
I've hated going to the doctor since I was about 14.  My usual pediatrician was unavailable (probably because I was a 14 year old girl, and he was a male pediatrician, but I didn't know this at the time), and I got some woman, who went on and on about my skin.
"What facial cleanser do you use?"
Uhhhh, we buy Dial soap?
"You don't need to use anything that harsh.  Daily?"
Nope.
"Every day, you should use a gentle, cleansing facial soap and then a lotion, and you should really look into anti-blemish skin cremes- anything over the counter will be fine.  Create a ritual about washing your face, which will make you feel better and clear up all of that terrible irritation.  You're going to have some bad scarring.   Here, this is a dermatologist that you need to see, it will take care of the way you look."
Is there some disease I have?
"Oh, no!  But you'll look so much better.  I really recommend you go see the dermatologist."

Thanks.  Thanks a lot, lady.  Because I was actually not totally fucked up about the way I looked.  Being told that I needed to see a special doctor to make me less ugly really helped cement what I felt about grown ups- a whole bunch of people trying to change things about me that weren't a problem, and also introduced the concept that I was possibly a very ugly child.

I told my mother there was no way in hell I was going to see a dermatologist about a cosmetic problem I didn't think I had.  I honestly don't remember another doctor's visit after that, until I had a physical at 19, from a 90 year old man in a different clinic.  I wasn't sexually active, so he didn't press any of the other procedures, and then I was covered by various college health care, so no true physicals until last year, when I avoided the procedure again.

They also took me to task about the flu shot.  I decided not to mention that my pediatrician once told my mother he thought I could get the chicken pox again, not the shingles, the chicken pox, because I had such a light case the first time- making me ineligible for the vaccine, but not immune.  I figure if I'm going through life dodging a second case of chicken pox, the flu is nothing in comparison.

Generally speaking, I'm pro-vaccine, but I worry that when we get rid of all the minor illnesses, we're going to replace them with something worse.  Same reason I suspect we have so many kids with allergies- I figure one way or another, these are kids who wouldn't necessarily have survived long enough to develop their allergy.  I've got no proof, but it's a thing I think.  I also think Alzheimer's would be way down if more people were dying from heart attacks- they wouldn't live long enough to get Alzheimer's.

All things considered, I'd much rather die with my faculties than live long enough to fall apart.

Prove Yourself Worthy, and I'll Grant Your Request

The taciturn Technical Engineer is holding up a set of short platforms while we load longer ones on the truck.  I've passed by him a couple times looking for other jobs and finally stop near him.  "I think I could probably be of better use elsewhere," he says.  I roll my eyes and wave him away from the platforms and lean myself up against them, "Sorry I didn't ask sooner," I say, "When a tech chooses to do a useless job like this, it usually means they're thinking."  He laughed.  I continue to assume I have done something right.

I sometimes worry that I speak with authority rather than from experience.  I need to stop assuming that.  There is a full stage (42'X6') printed projection backdrop in the show.  It took 2 hours to take it down, roll it and transport it.  They are very sensitive of this because one year, due to negative temperatures and not allowing the drop to thaw properly before unrolling it (I think it was -40 that year), the print froze and peeled away.  They're right to be careful with it, but not 2 hours of rolling and fighting careful.

On the roll up, the Tech Engineer tried to get the road crew to take care of it by asking the four most vocal members of our crew:  two supervisors, the vocal and opinionated girl running video, and the Production Manager and asking them to hold the unrolled edge, and then asking his crew of four to roll.  When I got there, the Production Manager was helping roll.  The Tech had walked away.  I saw immediately what he had tried to do to make this work, and how it had backfired.  The crew has rolled marley before- the vinyl flooring dancers require.  It's a pain in the butt and more difficult to roll.  But, there's the Production Manager, insisting that she knows what's correct; never mind she's never rolled the drop before, never seen it rolled, and has never rolled a marley floor either.  Work slows to a halt and a road crew member and I, tired of listening to objections, go to fetch The Tech "We need your guidance and expertise."  "That fucking drop."

The show is made up of a band, a handbell choir and a 135 member vocal chorus.  The opening of the show runs in layers, there's an announcement, the lights and video go, and a procession begins to light a candle and play a Bible as the hand bells perform.  There's narration under this, then the choirs enter under the organ music that opens their first piece.

Opening night, the stand lights for the hand bells were unplugged and didn't come on. As this came over headset, and they announced someone was working on it, I saw that the candlelighters had entered.  Good.  Now we have a moment, not an awkward silence. I see the Bible get placed. "Skip to the cue to light the Bible.  Why are the narrators not talking?"  My ASM responds, "Should they be?"  "Yes."  What I didn't know was that my ASM was crawling under the staging at this moment to go help with the lights. She crawled back and we had narration. We still didn't have hand bell lights, but our organist worked out what was going on and came in on her cue and the show went on, one hand bell song short.

So, no one realised everything had gone horribly terribly wrong, they just thought we were having a reverent moment. Go us.

Watch Me Try.

If someone tells you that you're not good at something, you don't necessarily have to believe them.

In high school, I helped build and paint all the sets for every single show I was in.  I got on the scene shop crew in college and worked there for a year and a half.  I might have stayed in the entire four years, until they hired a TD I couldn't stand and fled to the box office, a move that has kept me employable ever since.

I married a TD.  I have volunteered in three of the five shops he's worked for, because I have experience and I like the work.  But he's told me, I'm not fast enough, I'm not strong enough, I don't know enough to be helpful.  And I think, "well, he's worked summer stock and road crews, he knows.  I guess I'm not."

I'm stage managing a college choir Christmas concert.  The show has a well-meaning but inefficient college student crew that was this year supplemented by a hand-picked set of former large road house student crew who went through the same road house experience the TD I married has, but that I don't.  We met them at 8am today- one I know, the brother of a friend, but the rest were all strangers.  One was a former member of the college's crew, a guy who was called amazing and talented and one of the best.  The difference between him and the large road house crew was painfully obvious.

We put in an 8 hour day loading in and doing changeover for the performance tomorrow, and early on in the day, they were talking about hourly supervisor pay at the road house- more money than I make hourly in one of my jobs with the most hours.

"Really?  I should move up there and apply."
"Why don't you contact the union here in town and get on their overhire crew?"
"I could do that?"
"Sure, you do this all the time, right?"
"No?"
"Seriously?  Then you should give them a call and get on crew and get paid twice that.  They always need people; they call people from Cedar Rapids half the time."

By the end of today, I was the one the crew was coming to and the tech engineer was deferring to me over the production manager for a second opinion.  The tech engineer is a guy who worked with the guy I married, was his supervisor for a few years.  He knows his stuff and has no reason to ask my opinion about anything, and, up to today, hadn't.  I did something to prove my opinion was worth asking.

I play it well, though.  I costume appropriately, the jeans with the paint on the knees, my hiking boots that resemble steel toed shoes, a tech company t-shirt.  Being the girl in the room in ETC or Northern Sound gear means something in theatre, and I only have to do enough work to finish the illusion that I know a lot more than I really do.

Maybe it's not an illusion.

I Give Myself Very Good Advice, But I Very Seldom Follow It

It turns out that 9 years of being told you're not very good at a variety of intimate behaviour and that your spouse has no interest in performing a variety of sex acts you might be interested in is really going to land a blow on your self esteem.  It's not kindness, strength or love to determine that they must be right and you need to change or constantly accommodate their needs at the expense of your own simply because they have more sexual experience than you do, even though they don't seem to want to change the limited variety and frequency of any intimate contact.

Especially when, after six years of marriage, you find out that the person in question had spent the last three years actively seeking sex with sex workers and strangers of both genders, and had done the same thing without telling you throughout the period prior to your marriage.  He quit for the first three years of marriage, and that's when he stopped wanting anything to do with you, either.  That's really not a thing you should feel bad about.  You probably shouldn't spend a further two years thinking about how you can change this, because you can't.

Or so I would tell myself if I were giving myself advice.

I'm afraid to go forward.  I'm just as afraid now as I was when I was 19, wondering whether I was doing things because I liked them, or if I was doing them to get them out of the way.  I still wonder whether love is Stockholm Syndrome, or if I've just been doing it wrong.  I use that phrase slightly hyperbolic-ally, but I wonder.  I don't know what it's like to be actually attracted to an obtainable person, it's a thing I learned to do in the case of an individual who pretty much used and betrayed me throughout our entire relationship.  I would say a real person, but I had an enormous crush on an upperclassman in high school.  He graduated and came out in college.

So I ask myself, what am I doing wrong?  How do I go forward in relationships with anyone when I barely know what I want or like in another person, and am terrified of settling and re-arranging all my expectations in a different way simply because another opportunity might come along?

I have some very good male friends.  I don't want to sleep with any of them.  But I'm to the point where I don't know that I want to sleep with anyone that I don't know and trust as well as I know these men.

So maybe physical relationships are not for me.

After All, What Are Birthdays?

I wonder when I will be interested in celebrations again.

Four years ago, I decorated a Christmas tree by myself and I thought, "why am I doing all this work if I'm the only one who cares?"  

So I stopped.  When I was a kid, I had a vision of Christmas the way I wanted it, with people I genuinely liked.  As I got older, I realised Christmas was a family holiday, and people were going to spend it with their relatives.  

I spent a few years trying to find a holiday that people didn't have, so that I could have one.  I invited people to International Talk Like a Pirate Day celebrations for years, but no one ever came.  At the end, I started watching Groundhog Day every February 2nd and The Star Wars Holiday special on Life Day, November 17th, because maybe I could have a holiday just for me and that would be enough.  This year, I missed both.  

When I once announced my intentions to happily never celebrate anything again, a couple of very Catholic friends came down on me.  Ritual and tradition and family are very important to them- they actively celebrate stuff on the liturgical calendar that pretty much no one else does, because the two of them like it, and they like doing these things for their little boy, too.  

And that's all it takes- you have to have someone to do it with, or for, and I don't.  

If Woman Can Survive

From my horoscope: "Now would be an excellent time to brainstorm about the life you want to be living in 2020 and 2025. It's also a perfect moment to outline a master plan for the next ten years, and commit to it."

It reminded me mostly that, 9 years ago, I have no idea what I was doing.  I also know exactly what I was doing.  I was planning a wedding and trying to convince my husband to decide on graduate school, or not, or to find a job, or not.  In many ways, it was the worst year of my life.  I was incredibly unhappy; I hated wedding planning, I hated the stress of having to plan an event to meet the demands of people who weren't me.  I didn't have the balls to say no.  I hated arguing constantly with the guy I loved over stuff that, in the long run, didn't matter, except from the perspective where it wasn't what I wanted to do, and he didn't have an opinion because he had whatever opinion he was told to have.

I won't do that again.

It was a time in my life where nothing I wanted to do or thought about doing was as important as what someone else wanted, which was a convenient excuse to avoid thinking about what I did want to do.  Or, rather, the only thing I wanted to do was be married, and if I wanted to do that, it meant changing the plan.

So maybe I should ask myself, what life do I want to be living?

For the longest time, since some time after high school, when I think of the future, the picture in my head (it's odd, I process thought in words, but they're punctuated with images I don't create like the narration) is of me sitting in a room on the 3rd or 4th floor looking out a white painted open window on to a blue afternoon sky.  I get the impression there's a city out there.  Maybe the ocean.

It used to be standing at the bottom of a bluff looking up a rocky cliff covered in trees and greenery.  It was night time, and at the top of the cliff was a low, brown house with the lights burning yellow inside.  You could see through the huge picture windows.

I don't know what either of them mean.  I don't know why they changed.

I suspect the first is possibilities; all I have to do is look out the window and see what's out there.  The second one is probably maturity, looking up towards home and responsibility and the night is dark and there are obstacles.  In the first one, the only obstacle is me.

I thought of Siddhartha today for the first time in a long time.  This probably means I should read it again.

And what do I want?  Not love this time.  Knowledge I'll get whether I want it or not.  Wealth?  Unlikely.  Power?  Not really.  The only useful thing to do with power is to relinquish it.  Respect.  I think that's the one.

And where do I want to be in 6 years?  I'll be 36.  I want to be able to travel if I want to.  In 10 years, I will be 40.  I want to be asked to make art; I don't want to struggle to convince people I should be allowed an opportunity.

Of course, I've said I want to be Dave Sim.  To be Dave, I have to be crazier, and I have to do it on my own.  I'm not sure if that's a viable 6 year plan.  Of course, Dave started on his path to crazy much younger.  He was 21 when he started writing Cerebus, but he was 35 when he leapt from the sane train and started Mothers & Daughters.  So.

30.  Neil Gaiman was writing Dream Country.  John Lennon was in post-Beatles primal therapy.  Tina Fey was head writer for SNL.  Lucy Maud Montgomery was caring for her grandmother in Cavendish, writing short stories and beginning work on Anne of Green Gables.  There are worse options, I suppose.

I Only Dance in My Dreams

I dreamt last night that I met a very nice man named George.  I liked him.  We danced.  I do not dance in real life, but it sometimes appears in dreams as an ideal experience, probably signifying a level of comfort with the situation I don't have in life.  

I only dance in my dreams.  What a phrase.  

George and I were dancing, in the middle of a shopping mall food court in New Orleans.  Because I've never been to Louisiana, but I suspect it's a little bit like a 90s food court- pastels and trees and nice, but outdated and crowded with people you only see when you go to a food court.  We won an appearance on some movie, or something, for looking natural and dancing well.  

After this, it became increasingly apparent that George was the man who is going to be my ex-husband in disguise.  Through an elaborate ruse, he decided to attempt to win me back, and it was working.  The dream broke down from there and before I woke up, I was attempting to convince a society of warrior princesses to join me on some kind of crusade.  

I woke up and remembered how nice George was, and then who he really was.  Thank you, brain, your extended metaphor is not lost on me.  

Reason #4768 I'm Not a Feminist

One of the few promises I've kept to myself since I was a kid was never to wear makeup (I make exceptions for stage makeup, but it's still an incredibly rare experience).  This one is easy to keep because I don't like the feel of it.  I also don't wear bug screen or sunscreen or lotion, which will probably kill me one day, but until then I'll be happy.  And then I'll be dead.  

I've read a handful of articles lately about women talking about going makeup free, and how that's empowering, and valuable and I think, really?  

Not wearing underwear can be empowering if it's a change.  That's the difference.  It's just a change, and your perception of yourself regarding that change.  I don't feel more empowered or secure or whatever because I don't wear make-up because I never did.  The opposite is more likely- I have small eyes set beneath a heavy brow and bad skin- these are the two basic things makeup does, even out the skin and highlight the eyes.  I'm sure if I started wearing it on a regular basis, more people would think I was not unattractive, which would probably change my life in subtle ways and then possibly my perception of myself.  Only I don't really care, and I cannot stand the feel of the stuff, so it's not worth the effort to me.  These articles leave out the fact that the make-up is not the vehicle for change- wearing or not wearing make-up is not *inherently* linked to perception.  It's your choices and personal risks that make-up your self worth.  

Make-up your self worth.  See what I did there?  

I wish these articles instead urged people -not just women, people- to experiment in their lives and find out if the routines they've established are the life they want to live, and whether change might not be a better option.  But, I suppose that's not a headline for an article in Glamour or what people expect a celebrity to tell them when that celebrity is not fulfilling traditional celebrity roles.  

Reaching Near Good

Last night, I put heavier blankets on the bed and was warm for the first night in about two months.

So of course I dreamt I was engaged to Benedict Cumberbatch, but he'd been deceived into thinking he was in love with someone else and Martin Freeman and I had to track him down and make him remember me.

I haven't even seen any Sherlock since series three came out, which I've not watched past the first episode because I kind of loved and hated it.  It felt like it was pandering, and while I enjoyed being pandered to, I didn't really like knowing that I felt like I was being pandered to.

There's a joke about Chinese bears to be made here, but I don't know what it is.  

This morning, I thought nothing of the dream, but learned this afternoon that Benedict Cumberbatch had, indeed, gotten engaged to someone who wasn't me.  I'm waiting for Martin Freeman to show up.

There's an old trope that comes up about women in power, and how for one week a month you can't trust their decisions, and this joke, or whatever it is, really tends to make women angry because they claim it's not true.  I'd love to know how they do it.  I'm incapable of rational thought about four days every month, and I know exactly why.  Before I was on birth control, I thought maybe this was just a coincidence, because the correlation wasn't clear, but now that I know exactly what day of the week I am going to be irrationally angry, and when I'm going to be ludicrously restless, and which days I'm going to feel like crap (that would be now), I'm glad that I'm not in any position of real power, because warring nations would just sit there with the calendar and say, "Yes, yes, we'll just wait until Thursday."

Though really, I never have gotten the hang of Thursdays.

You know that moment where you could make a Middlemarch joke, and you realise that pretty much no one would get it even if you explained it?

I'm always surprised to discover that Douglas Adams and George Eliot overlap in my mind in quite the way they do.

One Small Fraction of the Main Attraction

Working on what was supposed to be a very short story that I was just going to rattle off in one stream-of-conscious draft and post.  It keeps getting longer.  And it turned into a period piece almost from the first sentence, so it requires more attention than brain spew.

The story is based on someone explaining that a corpse has more right to bodily autonomy than a pregnant woman.  Which set several thoughts in motion that I can pretty much never actually share with anyone who will ever be a parent, or has wanted to be a parent, or briefly thought they were a parent.  Because that's the kind of sick cookie I am.

I will probably never finish it.  It was meant to be horrifying, and it's only mildly weird, with all of the strange things hinted at and never actually revealed, as yet.  However, it's coming in at just over 2500 words, so, for the two days I've invested, I'm only 800-odd words from daily goal if I were working on a National Novel Writing Month novel, which I'm not.

I dreamt last night of catching the attention of a French puppet master who looked like Rene Auberjonois and lusted madly for me.  If that's symbolism, I don't want to know for what.

Assembling the Minions for My Theatrical Battalion

Auditioned 40-odd high school freshmen this afternoon for two and a half hours.  A good bunch of kids, there were only about 5 that I would have trouble working with, and, really, only two that I have no use for.

There's an Anne Shirley.  I'm not sure if she's a kindred spirit, but she's definitely Anne Shirley, because what else can you think when a red headed girl storms into the audition room with fervour and her words run over themselves as she tells you how very sorry she is to be late, and she must introduce herself, and her name is Anne (it's not) and I say, "Ann without an e?" and she says, "Oh, no.  Never.  But I must meet you because I want to be involved, and I want to do absolutely everything and I've never done this before and what do I need to do?"  Compare her to a very sure of herself young lady who has good command of game theory, but is otherwise kind of lifeless, and I'll take Anne Shirley every time.

I am a fan of the strange kids, the ones who got up there and did things in spite of their abilities and without any clear self-judgement.  I told them to be fearless, to make strong choices, because the kids who can embrace that are the kids you can work with.

It's still strange to see faces that repeat, and realise the owners of the faces appear to be fundamentally the same people.  The girls with the wide faces and big eyes who are sweet, and completely awkward, the spindly ginger boy who is a beloved diva, the swimmer you hope will amaze you, but it turns out he's going to be almost totally inept at everything he tries, the thin-faced girl who shakes like a leaf and tries not to let you see how nervous she is.

I walked into today really uncertain of what was going to happen, and walked out and didn't feel I'd done everything wrong.  It's a good way to feel.

The Happiest Corpse I've Ever Seen

I went to a show last night that friends who saw preview performances said was innovative and thought-provoking.  It was a mistake to get my hopes up.  What I saw was a run of the mill performance of an obvious concept for a show that was just fine, but wasn't breaking any new ground for me.

At the moment the lead male was kissed by a supporting male, however, gasps rang through the audience, and I was forced to admit that someone in the audience was having a thought-provoking experience.

I've been lucky enough to work with people trained in burlesque, busking and street performance.  It's different from stage acting, it's more raw, more real, and this was fake acting up close in a show that was afraid of the audience sitting six inches from it.

The best performer the entire evening was the scenic designer, a friend who was forced to be a real person because he was playing the locale's bouncer, a very real necessity for a show featuring that many scantily clad ladies, and was also incorporated into the performance.  He knew what he was doing.  The rest of the cast was just acting.

I was disappointed.  I know the problem is me, and people will be lauding the young director as a genius, and if I were 18 and looked up to him, I would probably agree, but...  It could have been so much more.

The other difficulty was they billed the show as 18+.  I assumed this meant that it had some guts and took some real risks, but I think all it meant was that the bar it was performed in had an 18+ license.  A show that could have been ribald and raunchy wasn't willing to be more than just a little bit naughty.

Genuine props to the curtain call, which did not exist.  It was the right choice, it was done pretty well, and the only thing it needed was one tiny something to make the audience realise it wasn't a mistake.  The bar was still open, so they couldn't toss a towel over the taps, but if they'd had the stage manager come out and turn off the single stand light, that would have done it, I think.  Just a tiny signal, because instead of being powerful with the audience, it became an awkward moment that turned funny, so, like every other choice in the show, it was a solid idea that didn't really come to fruition, but this one was the most successful, because it DID create a moment of "wait, what?" in the audience that the show failed to create at any other time, it just wasn't entirely crafted.  He's young.  He will learn.

Maybe it's the culture.  As a product of this culture, I sort of doubt it, but it might explain why I can't get my actors to come with me on my show.  Maybe it's the actors:  these aren't actors, they're people with real jobs who sometimes act and enjoy theatre.  There's nothing wrong with that.  That's fine.  But if you're a person who can't take the risk not to have a full time job with benefits and actually perform, you're probably not going to take those risks as a performer.

I'm not a performer.  I don't take those risks as an actress, or rather, when I act, that's risk enough, what more do I have to do?  So I understand, but I pick and choose my roles and shows.  As a director, I'm willing to go there.  As a playwright, I'm not.  I should be.  Those acts tumble from my brain just the same whether I scribble them furiously in the margins of a script or type it out and print it.

So I will probably make my audience on Tuesday night extremely uncomfortable.  That's my goal.

In the Event of Death by a Salesman

Rolling up my driveway to leave yesterday, a man was attempting to knock on my front door.  I stopped and rolled down the window.  He was from the cable company.  We have Internet through them, our neighbours have cable, and their cable has been down for nearly a month because a tree fell on the wire.  It's our tree, but their wire.  The electrical company came out and dealt with a previous tree in 24 hours, the cable company, not so much, it seems.

I assumed that's why he had come- the neighbours have an easement on our driveway because that's the only way to access their backyard and handle things like garbage pick up.

"Do you have cable?"
"No, it's the neighbours.  They're down the driveway."
"Oh, they're the other apartment?"
"It's not an apartment, they're the house down there, they use their back door for a service entrance."
"So, do you just have...?"
"Internet, yeah."
"You like it?"
"Sure."
"Any problems with it?"
"Only when it rains."
"Really?"
"Yeah, sometimes."
"Have you called about it?"
"No."

This same Internet provider company in a different town always maintained this same problem, which happened with greater frequency, wasn't their fault.  Of course I'm not likely to call a national company up just for them to read me the same script.

"Next time it happens, give them a call and let them know, because it could be something real simple and they can get out and fix that, no problem."

I wonder about my neighbour's cable, and why he's not down there fixing it, if this is the case.

 "So, why don't you have cable with us?"
"I don't like to pay that much money for ads."

I once stymied a satellite salesman with this argument.

"I see your point there.  Did you have cable with us before?"

Oh.  This man is not a tech.  He's a salesman.  Great.

"For a while, it's not something we watch enough to make it worth the money."
"How little would you be willing to pay?"

Guy, I'm sitting in my car, in my driveway at 5:30.  Do you really think that I want to have this conversation with you right now?

"Sixteen bucks," I say, remembering how much we pay for Netflix.  I should have said 6.
"I can do twenty."
"Tell you what, you give my husband a call and tell him about it."
"Oh, is he home?"
"No.  I'm going to pick him up right now.  I'm late picking him up right now."
"Well, you know, I don't like to do a hard sell or anything."

I'm in my car.  I am trying to leave my house.  You are still talking.  What part of that is soft selling?

"I say, give him a call, he likes to watch football, maybe he'll go for it."

I'm in the process of divorcing my husband.  There's no way he's going to go for it.

"Yeah, it's a great sports package, did you watch Company's Proprietary Sounding Sports Channel before?"
"I have no idea."
"Tell you what, let me leave this flyer with you, and you can talk it over and give us a call."

 Ah, you don't have the power to call him.  That's fantastic.

"That sounds great."
"Because, you know, that'd be twenty, so you'd be paying 89.99 instead of what you pay now."
"Absolutely, we'll think about it, you have a great day, OK?"
"Uh, yeah."

We currently pay about 75.  75+20!=89.99

I take his sheet, and drive up the driveway and away.  I wonder suddenly where this man's van is.  There's no parking on the bend I live on, he's certainly not parked in the driveway anyplace.  I know my brother is home, so even if this guy is just checking out properties to rob later, there's someone in the house.

I pick up my husband from work, drive home to drop him off at the top of the driveway and drive to the rehearsal I have to be at in half an hour.  Further up the street, I pass the cable guy again, walking, talking on his phone.  He does a double take as I drive by.

If we're all found dead and robbed in the next month, please look for Eric, the phoney cable guy.

Those two words are nearly a Google Whack.

First read rehearsal.  It was disturbing to discover that the 80 page script I anticipated would run 95 minutes if we were doing things very extremely wrong, ran instead for two hours.

It's a highly sensual script.  I debated between saying erotic, or pornographic, but I think sensual is correct, due mostly to what I discovered was rather inaccessible language for most of the cast.  Phantasmagoria.  Turpitudinous.

I don't think of the theatre as an inaccessible art, I don't consider the rhetoric extremely technical or complex, because it's life.  How can metaphor and life experience created by people who mostly aren't scientists or philosophers, but are sometimes both accidentally, be difficult?  And then I remember, after a conversation about her family and weekend plans, the sister of a friend said, "You do talk about normal things."  When I have to.

Although, it's also an erotic script.  One scene deals explicitly with necrophilia, another with coprophilia, where another could be described as merely foreplay and I thought, "I wonder if it's possible to link every scene with a sex act?"  Yes, either a clear or sub-textual sex act for each of the 25 scenes.  So, that makes my Google history all the more unique.

Candaulism is the word for a man who likes his wife to be the subject of other men's voyeurism.  Comes from an ancient King of Lydia who contrived to show another man his naked wife.  She discovered the plot, and told the peeping tom she was either going to kill him, or her husband, the choice was his.  He chose to live, and the Queen married him, and that's, apparently, how you choose to tell the story in order to cover up a murder and still become King of Lydia.

Noticing the irony that the most disturbing thing to come out of a rehearsal for a script about perversion, censorship and the nature of good and evil was the run time.