Unfix the Gamine

July 4, 2009
Entertainment Manager-On-Duty for the day. Estimated 75,000 people on Park to celebrate, and it still felt quieter, calmer and more together than last year's 55-60,000. I got to leave at 8:30 as scheduled. Even those that stayed late were home by midnight. A long day but so much nicer than last year's nuttiness.

July 5, 2009
Entertainment Manager-On-Duty for the day. Sleepy and sunburned from the day before but it rained all day and I spent most of the day deciding whom to send home.

July 6, 2009
Back to the children. I had the youngest ones today. They are terrors. If this doesn't scare me out of motherhood nothing will. There is a girl in camp called Kara. I was so excited to have a name twin... until I got to know her. She's awful. I am sad for her because I wonder if anyone will ever like her at all. The constant chorus of my name being hollered by angry camp counselors brings me back to my own childhood. 

Dinner at FLIP with hubby and Suchita Vadlamani... okay, she and her date sat two spaces down from us on the long banquette. She is teeny and very, very pretty. I'd only ever seen her on TV before.

I have no voice, but I do have air conditioning!

I will not let the gas get below 1/4 tank.
I will not let the gas get below 1/4 tank.
I will not let the gas get below 1/4 tank.
I will not let the gas get below 1/4 tank.
I will not let the gas get below 1/4 tank.
I will not let the gas get below 1/4 tank.
I will not let the gas get below 1/4 tank.
I will not let the gas get below 1/4 tank.
I will not let the gas get below 1/4 tank.
I will not let the gas get below 1/4 tank.

The sunset outside my sweltering office window high above Carver Hills is so many distinct shades of pink I am just a little stunned like when you touch the window unit with no shoes on and feel the stream of electrons course through you.

• The A/C in the house finally went kaput today.
• I made a child cry at camp.
• I had planned to fix the long broken A/C in the car last week but turns out it's not a $200 retrofit, but rather a $1000 replacement on my $600 car.
• My best friend died.
• Dolph's car also went kaput for the final time, no viable repair there.
• Coming down with something snotty and muscle achey.
• Oh, yay, gunfire!

I need a routine.

Am all atwitter over impending New Orleans trip. New Orleans is one of the great cities of the world, in my opinion, and one of the great cities of my own little life for sure. My skin aches for New Orleans air just thinking of it.

So, tonight I'm whining to yamguitar tonight because I wish I was progressing just a little bit faster with my hoop (yes, the one I've only had about a week!) I try to get him to do a little waist hooping. It doesn't go that well (why would it with no practice?) So, I offer to show him what I've learned. Waist goes fine. I try to show him chest hooping which I have NOT mastered and end up looking more like the hoop is beating me up. Which it is. Then, I say, "Well, I can sometimes get a couple of rounds at my knees but then I always drop it." I fling it around my thighs and it goes and goes  and goes and goes and I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing but it's working and it was awesome!!!! I love that I had just been complaining. Shut up and let it come, dummy! You can't make a flower sprout faster by pulling on it.

Ohmigosh, this hoop is so much fun! The good thing is that I was able to get it aloft and keep it aloft the first day. I only like to do things I'm good at, you know. I also found some wonderful tutorials on YouTube by the gal below. Hers is the first video I Stumbled Upon. (I love that she's singing along.) Each little thing is about skill and practice. Life is, I suppose.  There is this guy who seems to mix it with martial arts and hip-hop and says hooping is a spiritual endeavor. (There are some Native American tribes who have hoop dance rituals.) I don't know if I'm going to be that into it, but it's awfully fun grabbing it and doing a few laps and figuring out how my body works with it. Lulu is not impressed. I've dropped it by her head too many times.

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This is my hoop... and my dog.


Detail.

I got my hula hoop today!

It is pink!

I actually got it aloft for a few seconds at a time. It is a very good core workout.

That is all.

So, the break-ins, yeah?

And they got one but there were three. We mostly did the detective work.

Had an encounter with a neighbor today who walked into my yard, asked me if he could cut through. I said I was sorry, but this was private property and we would prefer that he didn't. He argued. I repeated. He cut through anyway. I chased him in my car and yelled impotently at him. Spent rest of day in rage of tears.

We need a massive kudzu killing up in here. Recs?

Gutters get cleaned next Friday finally.

We also need an exterminator, just routine maintenance. Who do you like?

Tag teamed our 45-degree-angled yard with Yam. It takes forever, but the weedeater is the way to go. The lawn mower will pull you right down that hill and into the loving embrace of its undercarriage.

Getting a check from Uncle Sam this year. So, that's new and good, though it's likely all spent on one year of health insurance and maybe a privacy fence (see neighbor encounter above). I had so hoped to pay off that damn MasterCard. Bastards!

Oh, anybody got fencing recs?

I'm actually enjoying my job at the Park right now. My co-staff have been unbelievably helpful and supportive during all the trials and tribulations and we even received a small assistance grant from the Park's programs to help with putting things back in order. I am also just not stressed about anything and even though I'm really behind on things, it's all good and I like going in. Usually, everything there makes me nuts. The commute, however, is killing me.

Got my first legit acting offer in about a year this week. AND, it was just an offer not a "come-and-read-for." She just called and said, "Do you want to do this?" That may be the first time that's happened to me professionally. (That's why I was asking about times, apersonalchef . I'll have a show that morning, but can be by your side by 11:30.)

yamguitar 's birthday turned out well. Seriously cannot thank whyvette , apersonalchef , Cathy, Penny, Susan, Sara, supergoober  and so many others for helping me make it happen. Especially, gt_norm who lent us Stevie.

My tail bone still hurts an awful lot. Have to sit on my thigh and rising from seated to standing takes my breath away still. I can't really tell if it's improving.

I need a dog park near us. Google says Piedmont is closest. Sheesh!

Had New York Super Fudge Chunk for dinner.

My professional hula hoop was shipped today!

Going back to Ren Fest tomorrow in hopes of an inannamoon  and Charles sighting. Also, Ethan and LeeAnna.

 From the website of a company that helps the uninsured with pregnancy:

"If you're uninsured and do not qualify for government assistance, the system is set up against your being pregnant, and you'll have to bear the brunt of the $8,000 to $20,000 incurred during pregnancy assuming you have a normal, healthy pregnancy."

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

It happened again today. The only reason I have this computer to type this to you is that my neighbor saw them lurking and called the cops. She said it was a sight to behold when they surrounded the house, the cops I mean. We didn't behold it as we were not here. Nobody was apprehended.

And, now I've come down with something. Raging sore throat that feels like a feral cat is clawing its way from my tonsils, up my eustachian tubes, to my ear drums. Hurts to swallow or yawn. No other symptoms really except for a slight fever late last night and my glands are so swollen I look kind of chipmunkey. Couldn't sleep well because of the swelling; every time my throat relaxed, I started to choke. Talked to Sara, a coworker, this morning. She had woken up with same. So, I likely gave it to her two days ago. Which means I got it, say Wednesday. Whom did I encounter on Wednesday and what did they have?

In honor of my conservative Southern Baptist heritage...

Revenge of Tammuz - Slow-roasted pork shoulder with orange-onion-brown sugar glaze
Pearls of Ishtar - Spring peas in butter sauce
Pagan Roots - Oven roasted potatoes and carrots
Popped Cherries - Cherry tomatoes sauteed with garlic in olive oil
Two Tarts - Lemon cake with whipped cherry icing
Southern Blasphemy - Iced tea, unsweetened, and probably a little wine 

The house smells like cake!

Instead of going on about blowing out a tire while entering the interstate at about 2:15 this morning and now having to pay $355 for a complete set of tires installed, I will instead regale you, gentle reader, with a memory from graduate school induced by an entry from froofie in which she jokes about having a penis.

While in a graduate acting course, we were assigned to play a scene from a contemporary American play: 2-person, light props, costumes, etc. Something meaty we could chew on. I was assigned a George and Martha scene from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to be played with classmate, David Pollack. Oh, and we had to play the opposite sex, so I was George. The year prior I had appeared in Sensurround Stagings'... um... staging of Geek Love. In that, among other things, I played Paul-ette, a pre-op transsexual stripper. His/her scene entailed my briefly undulating in a pink corset and baby blue skirt then lifting the skirt to reveal my twig and berries. This trick was accomplished with a wonderful, simple prosthetic created by Chris Brown which when backlit had a perfect size, shape and heft. Very convincing. Always elicited laughs or gasps. Luckily, I got to keep the piece after the show, and I decided to wear it under my clothes for the George and Martha scene many months later. I thought it would aid in my adopting masculine movement if I had the man's usual impediment to walking, crossing legs, sitting down, etc.  (You really do have to be conscious, it seems, of where that thing is or you might sit on it. Ouch! Though, I imagine, if I were born with one, it would become second nature to situate it appropriately. By the way, the "usual impediment" is a great euphemism for a penis, I think). The day of the scene performances came and I sat in class, costumed, including prosthetic, watching other scenes performed, very interested in them. I realized about halfway through a scene I was really enjoying that I had been... erm, fondling... the prosthetic for several minutes. I stopped immediately, of course, but found my hands wandering back that way seemingly without my direction. After the scene and notes, I declared to the class that it was amazing, I just couldn't keep my hands off it, to which my male professor cried, without skipping a beat, "Now you know!"

 Realizing I may be not enough of anything: neither fat enough nor skinny enough, neither pretty enough nor possessing enough "character," neither comedic enough nor dramatic enough, neither young enough nor old enough, not even average enough to be a blank slate and yet not unique enough to be cast in anything these days. I feel like I'm everybody's B or C choice these days. What to do about that? It's very difficult to typecast oneself. Too myopic a lens. 

 I just got myself somehow appointed to the steering committee of the newly forming community group for my neighborhood. It's both empowering because I feel like I'm at least feebly doing something and also all, "Oh, crap, I don't get involved in things. People will expect things. Oh, crap!"

So, I'm just getting around to reading an extra credit paper one of my students wrote in response to his attending Romeo & Juliet at the Shakespeare Tavern recently. He states in the third sentence, unequivocally:

"The playwright for Romeo and Juliet is Jeffrey Watkins."

Normally, I give students the full 40 possible points if they turn in any drivel for an extra credit paper, a sort of sop to their having got off their couches and into a real professional theatre. I only gave him 35.

ETA: The good news, I suppose, is that he enjoyed the production so much that he and his wife planned to return to see The Canterbury Tales. So, he's working on it.