Not Another Blog Post about My Not-Yet Produced Cabaret (but you may wish it was...)

So many good things in my life right now. So. Many.

Love tops the list, thank goodness. I love and I am loved. Probably like I've never been loved before. Probably because I never let myself. I am awash in unadulterated sap, all aflutter like I'm seventeen, and those who follow me on Twitter and Facebook already know this. I'm betting I made you throw up a little whilst scrolling your newsfeeds in the last few months, so I'll spare you that here.

For now.

But you have to admit, we are kinda cute together...

Sorry, SORRY! I'll stop...

Tomorrow I start rehearsals for CAROL'S CHRISTMAS. I'm directing, but not performing this time (thank goodness--CABARET XXX was tough!). It's written by my dear, dear friend Marni Penning Coleman, and I hope that Pinky Swear Productions gives it the life it deserves!

Marni & I, on the set of a film during which she killed me.

AND I just got back from Spa World today so I am totally relaxed.

My current version of life = Good.

Oh, I know the cynical, the road weary, those who live on the Dark Side, are smirking, saying to yourself, "Self, the other shoe is going to drop (whatever the hell that REALLY means), and she will fall HARD. BWAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Image from here

To which I say, "Well, DUH!"

I know it ain't all gonna be roses from here on out. Frankly, it isn't that and a bag of chips right now. My love lives about 600 miles from me, and given how busy I am during the day, directing this production is going to do its very best to send me to the loony bin. 

But I want all that too! So I bypass my savings account and buy some plane tickets. So I have a few sleepless nights, reworking Act I, Scene III in my head. It's the diving into life that gives me good stuff, and it's the living my life that knows with good stuff comes bad stuff and that I need to embrace all of it. 

So BRING IT, bad stuff! I've been knocked down before, and I got up again, then you knocked me down again, and still I got up, and you tried again and won, and guess what? I. GOT. UP.

But for now, like being under a blanket on a cold winter weekend morning, I just want to stay in my cocoon of warmth and happiness and NEVER forget what my life has given me thus far. 

For example...

Okay, NOW I'll stop. 

Friday Foolishness: My Unreasonable Pet Peeve of People Backing into Parking Spaces

This morning as I was making my usual run to Starbuck’s (because there are no decent coffee shops in Tyson’s Corner), I had to brake rather suddenly because the little red foreign car in front of me decided to back into its parking space.

"ARGH!" I yelled. Well, not really “argh.” It was a word that started with the letter “F,” if you must know…

Aside from the exit ramp from I Street SE to I-295 South (the one where the lane just STOPS, thereby making it next to impossible to merge into traffic), nothing gets my goat whilst in the driver’s seat more than folks backing into parking spaces. Numerous times I’ve had to sit in the parking lot waiting for some schmo to slowly and carefully back in to their chosen spot. I remain in a bad mood for a good ten minutes after that. Why can’t they just pull in? Don’t they see I’m right behind them? Rudy Rudertons! It just chafes me in all the wrong places.

Even so, you can hear me sing “Hallelujah!” when I get the chance to pull into one parking space and cross over to the other side, thus enabling me to pull out of the space when I'm ready to leave--LOVE pull-throughs! I do understand the advantages of pulling quickly and easily out of a parking space. I just don’t like be waiting tappity tappity tap behind people who back in.

I wish not so nice things would happen to them.

I wrote a blog post very early on about my shameful driving habits. I’m still hard at work on improving them. So today I did what every gal does who wants to take the high road and start behaving civily: I Googled “drivers backing into parking spaces.” And found the following:

• Traffic Engineering - Back-in vs. Pull-in Parking - which is better?
• People Who Back Into Parking Spaces Can Kiss My Ass
• Honk if You hate when drivers back into parking spaces
• If you're parking smart, you're parking backward

Lots of different views!The following observations were taken from three of the links above. On the con side:

If you're in a relatively quiet parking lot and you're particularly adept at reversing your Armada or Land Cruiser or some such behemoth into a space equipped for a particularly large clown car, go ahead. Have at it. But during busier times, saving yourself a few seconds at the end of your shopping spree won't make up for the havoc you can cause by backing in.

On the other hand, a forum of traffic engineers seriously applaud backing into parking space. As one put it:

I'd say backing (blindly if you are parked next to a larger vehicle) into moving traffic is more likely to result in injury than backing into a space between two stationary vehicles. Given a choice between scrapes and dents on one hand or rear-end crashes on the other, I'd choose the scrapes and dents.

So I get it. On the whole, it’s safer. And really, I’m only waiting for a few extra seconds, right? But to the point of Ms. Hyman, what if you’re in a very crowded parking lot and you decide to back in, thereby increasing the number of unmentionable chafed parts? Sounds like a no-win situation.

In the end, I like this theory:

I believe it’s rooted in theatrics. I think backwards-parkers are putting on a show of some sort, just showing off. They believe it makes them seem nonconformist, jaunty, and to be marching to a different drummer. You know, like people who are defined by their hatred of a popular TV show, or who tell everyone about their love of fast food pickles.

Happy Friday, ya’ll. Be safe in those parking lots…you never know what you might encounter…

 

My First Job with Pinkyswear Produtions

I don't remember if I've shared that I am now Resident Director at Pinkyswear Productions, a company comprised of six women who will together change the world of theatre.

Or something like that...

Our first contribution to DC theatre in 2011 takes place on Saturday, March 26. We have been invited to participate in DC SWAN (Support Women Artists Now) Day, an event hosted by the Georgetown Theatre Company. They are holding a Staged Reading Marathon: "16 short plays by women playwrights from all over the USA, staged by DC's woman (sic) directors," according to their website. We chose "People Like Us," by Chris Shaw Johnson from Westerville, Ohio. It's sweet, 10-page piece about two women who work together in an office. Not gonna say much more--come see it! I'm directing it, Rachel Lee Poole and Tori Miller are the actors, Karen Lange is reading the stage directions. You can find out more about DC SWAN Day here, and, if you can spare a few bucks, donate to support DC SWAN Day via Kickstarter here.

Upcoming Pinkyswear projects include a "we just wanna be rock stars" cabaret in June, and another version of the same--Cabaret XXX: Les Femme Fatales, for the Capital Fringe Festival in July. We're also gonna try to mount a show in the fall. I think I'm directing all of those projects and singing in the cabarets.

Looks like I'll have a bit more to write about...

More later.

A Personal Kick in the Ass

The last thing I do before I leave work, no matter how much I want to beat the awful commute I will no doubt endure, is to clean up my desk. The pens go in their holder, papers get filed, recycled or go into my inbox to be reviewed the next morning; even my post-it notes go back on their little shelf.

My kitchen at home is usually the same way: I don't like to leave with dishes in the sink, food on the counter, etc. It's such a tiny place that any semblance of mess makes the apartment look like chaos.

At least in my head it does...

Folks are indeed impressed by my neatness, including my boss (who mentioned my desk in my review), my dear friend who watches my cat, her mom that she brought in one time when I was out of town, causing me to be slightly apoplectic when I found out--my house is not clean enough for MOMS!

I like order. Sue me.

Or do I? 

My outside in no way resembles the mess living inside of me. Inside I feel like a pinball machine--thoughts whirling around, my brain not sticking to any one idea long enough to bring it to fruition. I reach for something, remain interested in it for about two seconds and then I'm off thinking about something else.

Wait: let me further define all of this. Thinking = worrying.

I worry whether I'm good enough for my day job; I worry that I'm not being seen enough as a performing artist. I worry that I'm not a good daughter, sister, friend, aunt, pet owner. I worry that I'm not contributing enough to the world, because after all, as a childfree woman in her 40s, what the hell use am I to anyone? I'm useless, useless USELESS.

Pause.

And then I think about everyone who is raising children or out of a job or debilitated in any way and I realize I'm SELFISH SELFISH SELFISH.

You get the downward spiral idea.

The half a dozen or so follows of this blog know that I keep lamenting that I have not yet produced a cabaret yet. Judging from my anticipated 2011 schedule, I don't envision it happening anytime soon. In my defense, it's because I have other balls in the air and some of those balls include performing. So it's not like I'm curled up at home, cat next to me, paging through Lucky magazine and watching the world go by.

I don't want to rehash all of the reasons why I do or I don't do things. I acknowledge that I haven't been doing them. I let the whoosh! of life pinball me along---the buying of cat food, the visiting of relatives, the out of town meetings--and give that as an excuse to Not. Create. 

I just stopped doing it.

So when my new friend David Loehr (he of the stupendous 2amt fame) told me whilst drinking Marshmallow Shakes at Good Stuff Eatery that he was going to "stop stopping" (long story--had to be there, or let him tell you), that hit home with me. It still does. Stop stopping. 

I'm gonna be sorta passive-aggressive here and say that I'm not the sort to dwell on the "useless" and the "selfish" thoughts I penned above. I'm a fairly positive person. I get by, but oh; the possibilities...I know I've been coasting along on my hiney for a few years now.

So I'm gonna stop it.

Stay tuned...