I dream of Eno…

We’re a few months away at this point, but Eno is already flitting into my brain. This time it was combined with a strange dream essentially reminding me how dissatisfied I am with the current state of finances vs. working doing what I want to be doing.

I’m not really sure how it got started, but I was at Eno, but it was unusually open. I remember sitting on the steps of the hospitality station, but it felt more like Squire’s Castle in Cleveland. I was sitting there, looking out at the side of the Meadow Stage and all I could think about was how I’d so much rather be doing this full time than go back to doing my normal job with the agro-chemical folks.

I don’t even know who I was talking to at the time, but I remember talking about the moves we’re working on with my job, making it more of a project coordinator position than a true administrative position and how I was looking forward to that. Then, the music coordinator for the Eno looks at me and says “but that’s not what you really want.”

I remember looking at him in shock. And suddenly there’s all the people I’m used to seeing at Eno - the green-nature lovers in their comfiest, lightest weight clothing, the tie-dyed hipsters and the teenagers in bikinis and shorts. I look back at my stage and there’s a great band on with all kinds of complicated pieces on stage and I helped get them there and started and they’re looking to me to get them off on time so the next group can start. And I have a standing position here where people like me and look forward to seeing me and I them.

My mind starts flashing through to my current cast and how much I’ve enjoyed working with them and how vocal one has been about how impressed she is with me. And then I think of the company that calls me back year after year for tour and has asked me to work on their next project. Or the director who has been trying to get me to work with him for two years now. The director who has emailed me asking me if I’m available for either of his shows in the next season and tells me I’ve spoiled him for working with his students.

I had a discussion last night with one of my actresses and she asked why I wasn’t working with the local Equity house. I explained part of it was stability, part of it was not wanting to get an Equity card and then NOT be able to work anywhere else and part of it was out and out fear. What if I’m not good enough for professionals? What if I’m terrible and can’t do this full time? Will my life really have been a game of me just doing what I can because I like it and I’ve made it a priority like some aging musician and his garage band that plays an occasional gig at the bar? I love doing this and I’m good at it…is that enough?

I remember seeing this flash in my dream as well, through my mind in seconds and then feel the breeze and the trees as I ran. And the buzzing of my alarm waking me up. Waking me to another day of doing something I’m good at to pay the bills and getting to do what I really love for pennies at night, keeping me away from family and friends and hopefully making a different family over an art.

 

T13: How to disappoint a Mother

Mother’s day is coming…and with that, the guilt of how to properly thank the woman who brought you into this world and could quite possibly take you out of it.
How to Disappoint a Mother

1. Move Out The number one thing I have ever done to make my mother sad was leave home. They count the days until you walk out the door, but they never seem to realize that it actually means that you leave.
2. Live in another state/country To add insult to injury, if you’ve decided to be a functioning member of society by not living at home and setting up your own household - choose another state to do it in. It means that both parties will end up “wasting” vacation time visiting family…but it also saves you from the last minute drop-ins
3. Don’t have children* Not a guaranteed way to totally destroy your mother, but many seem to believe that the best way to get even with you for the hell you put them through as a child is to have one of your own. If you decide against that, then they automatically lose the right to laugh at you when your children pull a trick you did so many times.
4. “Waste” your education Often nowadays, parents help their darling offspring get a further education. Be it becoming a doctor or getting your contractors license, if you decide after a year or a day that this is no longer the career for you, it is a guaranteed arrow in to their heart.
5. Be employed in a shaky profession My parents are rational adults. My mother was so happy when I looked at a career in chemical engineering. Then, I switched to drama the same year my brother started performance jazz. Neither screams stability.
6. Be unemployed Even if no fault of your own, one of the fastest ways to disappoint is to not be gainfully employed. As I’ve been told, it is very scary to have one of your children (or their spouses) unemployed. It’s almst worse than #5.
7. Have debt Especially now, the idea that you owe money or don’t pay off your credit cards every month is a cringe worthy offense. How do you know something catastrophic isn’t going to happen and you will need your reserve?
8. Don’t Call Please.
9. Don’t Write The art of letter writing is gone, but you still need to send cards for the major holidays. If you don’t, that’s horrible.
10. Don’t listen to their advice They’ve got years of life experience and don’t want you to make the same mistakes. So by not listening you’re rejecting them completely! Evil child.
11. Buy her the wrong thing If you don’t know her size, go with jewelry. Or flowers.
12. give gift cards This just means that you have no imagination
13. forget Don’t forget your mother.

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Weekends are for social insanity

Last weekend, amid opening Clean House, we had a full schedule. Kicking off the weekend early on Thursday was Opening Night which – for the first time ever – was attended by the Bald One. He seemed to enjoy the show and meeting the people I’ve been spending way too much time with and we escaped to our home at a decent hour.

Friday, the actual start to the weekend, had me enjoying a fabulous apple martini at Spice Street after the show with some of the cast, the director and our house manager. When I left at a decent hour, I was cajoled into driving fifteen minutes past my house to R&T’s new digs. After about an hour of checking out the nifty place, sitting on their deck enjoying the weather, the week caught up with me. We all migrated in to play Mario Kart and I started to fight sleep in the comfy leather recliner. I eventually give up, the boys run off to play loud music and I’m prodded awake around 4am to go sleep in a real bed.

Saturday – blissful bed as long as I want – followed by an attempt to clean and do useful things before running off to my show. The big deal this time around was that following the show, I was meeting the gang at our favorite little downtown bar for the Class of 1985 Prom. Complete with costumes and more AquaNet than I thought still existed. I can’t think of a song that they played that we weren’t singing word for word. What a deranged bunch we are.

Sunday was quieter, as suits the day of rest. Our matinee audience was refreshingly unexpected. After the show, we closed up shop for the next three days and I went off to a small house party in the opposite direction of my home. The party was a good mix of theater and civilians from all walks celebrating the Rites of Spring and the Fifth of May. After enjoying some excellent imported cheese in quesadilla form, I headed back home for a lazy evening with my husband.

You would think I’d learn to take a weekend of down time? Nah, why live that way…it’s too quiet.

 

Showing off!

iris

Originally uploaded by Rae Z

Just wanted to point out an example of how fabulous my husband is. Shown here is some of the mulch work he has done around the yard. We have this cypress mulch all over the house - attached gardens. The floating islands in the front are 2/3rds covered.

The Bald One rocks.

 

Darnit, I want my deck

Today is the absolute perfect day to have a deck.

There are twenty gazillion things I should be doing right now, ranging from scrubbing six weeks of life off the interior of the house to mowing the weeds. What I really want is to have some kind of cushy recliner set out on my non-existent deck and enjoy the cool breezes as I doze in the sun. It’s been that kind of week.

Our show opened on Thursday, which was quite excellent. I felt loved and admired as one of the actresses proceeded to say how fantastic I was. I made bonus points with her daughter as well by recommending that she check out the Maine State sumer theater camp. Just the fact that I knew about such a thing apparently was awesome. And, for the first time ever, the Bald One was in attendance. That made my night.

This show’s tech wasn’t a particularly hard one, but the week before of running and notes and discussion every night and will we/won’t we get the set elements in time was a little taxing. Add to that opening on the first of a month when bills are due and being in that odd limbo at work of being on the cusp of being busy but not being busy yet and you have one whacked out little Rae.

The yippy-skippy news is our federal “economic stimulous” package arrived. I should throw it at a bill and make it go away, but at current, I have a plan where we actually are managing to pay things down in a reasonable fashion. Combine that with the couple that gets us to go downtown and have a beer with them so often moving out to the boonies and we have an instant extra money supply. So the majority of the funding went into a savings account.

The not so yippy-skippy news is that the Bald One’s employer officially filed Chapter 11 yesterday. Blaming the sagging home market and the lack of retail confidence and you’ve got a failing home-goods store. Oddly, they’re not closing any stores in this area - despite our bets that one of them really should be. The Bald One does have his resume all shined up and has already applied for another position with a prescription home delivery company. Normal hours and theoretically better pay? If he’s happy, I’m all for it.

But now, I’ve delayed long enough. The house isn’t getting cleaner with me playing online. The bills are paid though, the one odd charge is gone and the breakfast has long been finished. Time to get cracking on life.

Even though the breeze is blowing and the birds are singing. Damn reality.

 

Spring! Well, maybe…

After it warming up to the upper 70’s and low 80’s for a week followed by a cold snap that brought all our plants indoors, we’ve started to warm up again. Just in time for my show to open and me to have time on the weekends to think about making it pretty. The Bald One has put in many hours while I’ve been at the theater or at my day job and all but one island in the front has been weeded and mulched. Since we were starting from a complete lack of mulch and a mess, this is an amazing feat.

The fact that our front has gotten this far has made me realize that we need a lot more work to make the front yard match the rest of the neighborhood. We don’t live in a showstopping community. It’s more of a tired, real community that your see inmore established areas. The picture perfect houses scare me. But even with a quieter set of standards, we still look too new, too disorganized.

Part of the solution will likely be adding more color. We’re slowly getting there as the roses take more presence in the yard and the burning bush is loving taking center stage against the blue-grey house. Our winter honeysuckle has established and is climbing insanely on a different side. To contrast, the jessamine has overgrown the trellis on the side of the house. It just takes time and I’m impatient.

the other thing our yard desperately needs is grass. Currently we have a mix of three different types of weeds along with bermudagrass and some kind of fescue. Pestering some of my coworkers, I discovered that the best bet for the moment is to keep the lawn and weeds closely trimmed and spray a broad-range herbicide to kill what survives trimming. This should keep things down until fall when we can re-seed. At that point we should be able to keep things at bay and crowded out by the grass root structure. Hopefully.

Really, I don’t give the Bald One enough credit. A majority of the heavy lifting when it comes to getting things done around the house - inside and out - is done by him. I guess it makes us even - I’ll get the bills paid and do some of the artsy point of view nonsense, and he gets to buy power tools. As I type this, supposedly I am getting wall mounted shelves put up in the office which will give us more book stashing space and a place to display his action figures.

I have a good one.

 

Primary crazy

votestoat

Originally uploaded by Rae Z

If you live in the USA and don’t live under a rock, you probably know that North Carolina, along with Indiana, is going to be having a primary election on Tuesday. Due to the potential insanity of the event, NC began one-stop voting a few weeks back where new voters could go to a special location, register and vote all in one spot.

Courtesy of NPR, Obama for America, the Clintons and the Democratic party I know this fact all to well. Too bad these polling locations all operate during hours I’m not anywhere close to my district (working hours + some evening hours I’m at the theater). I’m not even in the right county during these hours.

The big deal for the May 6th primary is the presidential ballot. By this time four years ago, we already had a ballot of John^2 and our voting was a bit of a joke. I figured, like many, that our state again wouldn’t bloody matter. I’ve done no research, unless you count the discussions with my parents where I’ve found out that Obama hates guns (Dad) and just has no experience (Mom). Course, if we’re going with sweeping generalizations, Hillary isn’t much better as the media is portraying her as a tired, shrieking harridan.

I also haven’t put much effort into the other major issues on the ballot - our primaries for Governor, the US Senate seat currently held by Liddy Dole, and a slew of House seats, various upper level state government seats. I really should do some research on these.

But trust me, by Tuesday, I might have an opinion

 

Protected: And then, the other side of the coin…

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Protected: *tap tap tap*

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see why I love him?

Conversation via text message with the Bald One this morning:

Rae: Journey, Heart and Cheap Trick at the Creek this summer. We going?

Bald One: Fuck ya!

Rae: Love you!

Bald One: love you too

See why I love him?