Theatre @ MindSay 
acting
Today at noon D & M arrive. they are such close friends that they have their own coffee mugs with their names on them and the guest room got finished yesterday with the new shades installed and the jacuzzi scrubbed and disinfected. and this morning I will buy fresh flowers for their room. Abs will freak out at first but after they have stayed and behaved for a few days she will settle in and probably sit on one of them.
So I wont be around much, unless they all go hiking and leave me alone for a few hours to decompress. introvert that I am.
Last night's The Clean House a play by Sarah Ruhl was wonderful . It's about order and chaos and the need to have both in your life. There is a wonderful line where Ana is dying of cancer and she talks about not wanting a relationship woith her disease. he knows she has to have a relationship with death but she refuses to have a relationship with disease.
and for the first time in over year I wore stockings and high heels- thigh highs but before the first act began I could feel them creeping down my legs so I asked at the box office if they had some rubber bands abd the fat oneos they gave me were perfect for keeping the lace topped stocking up for the remainder of the evening. I mean NO WAY am I ever going to wear pantyhose again. so I might invest in some fancy black lacey garters or a garter belt. Jim would like that too. panty hose are among the least sexy and least healthy gaments on earth.
Yesterday Jim chopped firwood as long as it wasn't raining and I scotchguarded the placemats and table runners I finished. Now I will make another white cotton nightgown- this time with a leafy lace yoke. Oh and I caught the abster drinking from the bidet- how cute is that?
I’m back after taking a little break last week to study for exams and combat the flu. I passed all my exams and redeemed myself for that disastrous last semester at ECU ten years ago, and now I have only a slight cough I just can’t get rid of. To celebrate my success and semi-recovery, Angie and I ventured to Raleigh Sunday for an afternoon of theatre.
We went to Theatre in the Park for Ira David Wood’s annual one-man performance of Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory. It was a very touching story, and I believe that it was the best theatrical performance I have ever seen. Since we’re only a week from the day, I thought I’d pull up a memory or two of my own.
Believe it or not, spending Christmas Day at the police department isn’t that bad. I spent six of the eight Christmases I was employed with the TPD sitting there in the dispatch center. Aside from actually being expected to work on Christmas, it was a rather enjoyable day that I could spend the bulk of reading or watching TV.
Sometime mid-morning, the whole squad would gather in dispatch to exchange gifts with our sergeant. The first call of the day never came in until around 4, when someone who’d been hitting the booze all day finally had just enough to foul everything up for me and their family.
I really loved Christmas when I was little. I always hated kids who insisted there was no Santa Claus, and I still do. Adults who “don’t want to lie to their kids” are even worse. I remember being in a church service once when the preacher’s wife proclaimed that Santa Claus did not exist, and then proceeded to assault our ears with her rendition of “Mary Had a Baby.” I briefly questioned the existence of God, let alone Santa Claus, after listening to her caterwauling, but then I came to my senses. I don’t think God minds Santa Claus if you keep him in proper perspective. You’re in the minority; get over it.
I’ll have you know Santa Claus came to my house every year, and one time there was some red fur on the wood in our fireplace where he had torn his pants. He left numerous apple cores and orange peels behind on the table where I’d put them out for him. He even left me a nice letter once explaining why he wasn’t able to leave the toy I’d asked for as proof of his existence for a little jerk in my class. So what if Santa’s handwriting resembled my mother’s?
Shame on me, I hated it when Christmas fell on a Sunday and we were expected to go to church, but I did always enjoy the Sunday night services before Christmas when there was a church-wide carol fest. There were special numbers in addition to congregational singing, and one little girl in my class played the Air Force song on the piano. Puzzling to me also.
My family always had our big dinner on Christmas Eve, and then we’d open one gift before going to bed. We’d get up Christmas Day, open the rest of the presents, and then have country ham biscuits for breakfast. Sometime after noon, we’d visit the grandparents.
When I was little, Santa Claus filled a stocking for me at my Granny Lewis’s house too. She always had a table full of ham and turkey, and every dessert imaginable. In later years, as the family swelled with in-laws, she just cooked a huge pot of vegetable soup and a few desserts, but truth be told, after stuffing myself with ham and turkey on Christmas Eve, just a month after doing the same on Thanksgiving, the soup was a welcome relief.
This Christmas will be different. I’m going to Sparta to see how the in-laws do it. It’ll be my first Christmas away from Tarboro since 1992, and my first away from home ever. I went to Sparta a few days after Christmas last year, and I was able to take part in one of their traditions that was right up my alley: going to the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia, to see a Christmas play. Last year we saw It’s a Wonderful Life, and this year we’ll take in another version of A Christmas Carol. It should be fun.
Since I’ll be away, I’ll just wish you a Merry Christmas now...and thank you for doing the same. Don’t wish me Happy Holidays or Season’s Greetings. It’s Christmas. Have a merry one.
© 2007 by J.D. Lewis
.Last week, since my schedule opened up a bit, I came in to work in the costume shop Tuesday afternoon and evening, Wednesday morning, afternoon and evening, and Thursday morning and afternoon. Even though what I had been working on didn't come out exceptionally well, I felt accomplished. I had really worked hard.
.I came in Friday because I had some extra time. My co-designer immediately bitched me out about cleaning up after myself in the shop (something she never manages to do) and was incredibly unenthusiastic about the sort-of-Roman skirt I had constructed. I was totally crestfallen. I stuck around, eager to show that I could be of service, but she never offered me something to work on with her except bending a crown into shape. Finally, I stopped her in what she was doing and said, "Can we just sit down right now and figure out a timetable--when I'm going to be doing things and when you're going to be doing things and when they need to be finished. Please." She looked at me before turning to the skirt on which she was working. She stared at the skirt, said, "Umm..." and never finished her sentence. At that point, I was incredibly frustrated. I waited five more minutes, her still blowing me off, before finally saying, "I think I'm going to go," and just heading out.
.I had a message on my voicemail yesterday from my professor telling me he sees my co-designer working but really thinks I need to be spending more time in the shop and working more toward the show. I was flabbergasted. And furious. I spent every spare second (other than Saturday, my only free day on the weekends) in the shop... and here he was accusing me of not working on the show! I'M SO BUSY IN LIFE THAT I HAVEN'T UPDATED MY BLOG IN POSSIBLY A MONTH--AND HE THINKS I'M NOT WORKING HARD ENOUGH!!!!! Obviously my codesigner, the cunt, said something. These are conclusions he could not have reached on his own. He's never in the shop to know those things, so someone would have to have told him this. SHE would have had to have told him this.
.My first thought was to drop the opera and just costume some dance piece for credit, but I know my professor would be completely disappointed. I just have to do the grown-up thing--I have to confront my co-designer. I have to tell her, "You're wrong about me, and this is why (you stupid home-schooled bitch)." I, of course, would not say the things in parentheses. I fucking hate drama when it's not where it belongs--in a box, on a screen, or on a stage.
1. The lead singer of the New Pornographers. An AMAZING concert.
2. Emily outside of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
3. Emily and I at the Met with Anna and Sigourney, two of the girls from my ELP group.
4. The dinner party that Emily and I hosted.
5. Porcupine cake! This was honestly the best dessert ever. So friggin good.
6. Playing Apples to Apples. Only the best. game. EVER!
7. At the MMs store. Just so many small candy-covered chocolates. Just so many.
8. Fulfilling childhood dreams at the American Girl Place. I had to sneer at lots of little children in order to get them out of the way so Emily could take this picture.
9. Again, at the American Girl Place. Really, just too much excitement.
10. Outside of the Eugene O'Neill Theatre, where we saw Spring Awakening. Which was AWESOME.
11. At the Pumpkin Festival in Central Park. We are really adorable.
12. Again, at Pumpkin Fest. It was all to raise money for children with life-threatening illnesses. They were trying to get as many people as possible to carve pumpkins. There were LOTS.
13. At the Imagine memorial at Strawberry Fields. Emily and I had a real adventure finding it. But it was totally worth it. We got lots of exercise and saw tons of Central Park!
14. Emily and I. What a wonderful weekend!
ps. Emily is alabasterfae. And she's awesome.
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