Weekends

I am liking them more and more. They used to be exhausting and often rather disastery (which is to be expected when you either go out until all hours in the morning or stay home and worry about someone else out until all hours of the morning and then sleep away all the day parts of them).

This weekend was full of friends and shows and fun. Friday night was Legally Blonde the musical which was AWESOME! And WAY fun!!! Saturday was costco trip and friends and bad movies and then a autobiographical monologue show starring other friends. Sunday was rehearsal and then a little cuddle time with the boyfriend and then running into random friends on the street and then dinner with my roommate. We had steak and this cucumber, greek yogurt, mint dip that she makes (she is Persian) and green beans and then we ate ice cream straight out of the pint and watched another bad movie (this one was worse than the other, a seriously terrible rom com that is the reason the genre has a bad name--actually it was pretty funny how I kept calling out exactly what was about to happen with a 97% success rate and I had never seen it before). It was great!

Tomorrow night is show time! We open another ep of the ville. And I have people's coming.

I hate Maxi Dresses

For real. I just don't like them if they fall longer than mid calf. They are ok falling that length, comfy and cozy, perhaps longish but whatevs, summer appropriate and sometimes what you need. I HATE full length eat your feet maxi dresses. They look awful and mumu and caftan-y (not in a good way) on almost everyone. I mean they aren't even that flattering a look for Uma Freaking Thurman and she is 19 feet tall with all the boobs and curves a woman could hope for. About the only people they look mildly flattering on are anorexic models who need the extra pounds they add if only to look less like a corpse.

Just seen a lot of them around Chicago lately and would like my displeasure to be felt.

Other than that, I got nothing. Well except this, the June episode of the Ville is going to be really good! Lots happening, people being funny, good sad serious stuff. Just all around good. People seem to be really nailing it, so if you will be in Chicago on a Monday in June, you should come out and see it.

Long Weekend

It was also a trying one. My decision turned out to be even harder than I thought that it would be, and I already knew it was really, really hard. Then Sam was being difficult and I wasn't sure why, but we ended up talking it out, and I think we both understand each other better, and he still isn't drinking, so that is good.

I am back at my apartment watching "The Way We Were" as Azar makes a collage. She has never seen it, but I think she will love it. (Right now she is squealing and covering her eyes because Hubble has gone home with Katie and it is only the first half an hour)

This week will see me falling back into my life's routine. It will also see me stopping work on the novel. I just have had too much stress and insanity in my life to keep it up and the deadline is just stressing me out, and I am stressed out enough without it. It is there on my computer, if I want to work on it, I can. I just am off the program. I will NaNoWriMo this November, and call it good.

This is weird

But, I know that this is something that I am going to have on my mind for the next few weeks if not months, so I know I will want to be able to talk about it here, so I have to acknowledge it here even if this is kind of uncomfortable for me.

 

In the past I have acknowledged that Sam and I have been going through some rough patches.  It has been now the better part of the year that we have been in and out of rough patches.  I know now (and have known for some time but not the whole time) that they are due to the fact that Sam is an alcoholic.  He hasn't quite gotten to the point where he has or even can acknowledge the full power of what that means to himself.  He has said he thinks he is one, but I don't think that he has let himself really wrap his brain or life around that, right now he mostly considers it a "symptom" of his anxiety disorder.  At times he does better with it than others, and he is definitely a functioning alcoholic when it comes to work, but when it comes to his home life (and my home life) he is way less functioning.  He has never hit me or done anything that extreme to me other than just generally being a jerk to me when he is drunk and having no recollection of it while sober.  This week, it got the better of me.  I finally had enough of his shitty behavior and how crappy it was making my life, and I decided that if I want my life better I need to quit moping and take action, so I have.

 

For those of you with pits in their stomachs, Sam and I have not broken up nor do I have intentions of doing that.  While I still have my own apartment, I am moving there.  Tonight I drive a zipcar load back home, and I will be staying there at least until my roommate gets back from her summer vacay in Iran near the end of July.  It solves the problem of who will look after my house while she is gone, and gives Sam the opportunity to shape up.  I will not be staying at his house, although I will go there to visit my cat (who is staying with Sam).  Sam is welcome to stay at my place although he has a curfew to avoid late night drunken insanity of the variety that has of late been making my life crappy.  Along with the cat, some of my stuff will still stay at Sam's because I don't intend this a permanent move.  Although, if Sam does not use this opportunity to get his shit in order, there is the ominous (and I hope unecessary) possibilty that it is a permanent move.  I really, really hope not.  But Sam the alcoholic has the very classic alcoholic history of fixing things just enough to get himself out of trouble but not enough to lead to him having to give up too much of what he wants.  I did also make a condition of my returning to his apartment that he must either attend start attending AA or make a full disclosure of his drinking and the problems it has caused in his life to his psychologist who he mostly has been not bothering to tell about it while being on medicine for an anxiety disorder that totally is sabotaged by alcohol.

 

Like I said, this will be on my mind for the next weeks and months.  I am on the one hand happy about it because I really am optimistic that it will put us on the path to real change, but on the other hand quite sad because it is kind of a heart wrenching thing to be doing and just a generally awful circumstance to find myself in.  I really wish we had never had to be here.

 

I am not however a disaster.  I am fine.  I have been much more of a disaster than I am right now when dealing with this earlier.  I do think this is a good step.  Sam and I both plan on attending my brother's wedding over 4th of July, the bitchbarn reunion the next weekend, celebrating my birthday at the end of June, and taking a huge vacation with his family right around the time I am to move back in (if all goes well), so this is definitively not a step towards the end of a relationship so much as a step towards fixing what is broken in it.

no further

I have written no further, instead I was in the grips of a killer cold that made me feel like I was going to die.  Well maybe not so dire, but there was feverish bits and chills and a painful sore throat that turned into a hacking cough and there were rivers and oceans of snot that wasn't terribly technicolor which was nice.  I basically stopped eating since I wasn't hungry, but if hot soup appeard I would drink that because it made the throat feel better.  I think I subsisted for four days off three bowls of soup and some water.  I tried to drink liquids, but I know I wasn't drinking close to enough.  Mostly I fell in and out of sleep on my bed.

 

Which makes today back at work wonderful!  WONDERFUL!  There is sky and the air from outdoors and other people, and I am just so happy to be out and alive--although some of this may be the codeine in my cough suppressant/expectorant talking.  I also have a new doctor who is very exotic and beautiful, and I will be going back to see her for regular phyiscal/check up doctoring (my first since moving to Chicago, I know, I know, shame on me, I know, there were just big chunks of no insurance or insufficient insurance or no ability to pay the copay or take the time off to go to the doctor, so please don't tell me socialized medicine would be awful because it would make many people's lives so much easier but whatever).  Did I mention codeine?  Ok, so I am not really taking as much codeine as I am making it sound.  I take a teaspoonful and then like later by many hours (often more than the label says) I take another when I start coughing again, and the label says I could take two teaspoonfuls if I want which I did last night to help get to sleep.

 

I seriously have not had a cold like that in so long I cannot remember.  Seriously it was ickariffic.  A term I have no coined for bad colds.

 

Back to rehearsal and some writing tonight.  Tomorrow night and Friday will be heavy writing nights as well.  Basically I must become instantly very effficient at finding time to write as I am about halfway to what I should be by the end of the week (as in should be at 15k and am at 7250).

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Well that is a little better. I guess, a little less in the whole for this week. I will keep things posted.

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I have been so sick today. My throat hurts so badly. It just hurts like right where a choker would go and I am drinking cough syrup (well not really, really using it as directed on the label) and eating the occasional cough drop and drinking hot liquids and sleeping a lot while everyone else went sailing. But I am trying to get some words in tonight even though it is not likely I will stay on goal target, but I will get back on goal target soon. I know I will. Tomorrow has a good chunk of time devoted to typing/novelling.

New Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago

It is a truly gorgeous space.  It feels like you are in a piece of art, or more like a generous, glorious frame.  The views are gorgeous, and along the side of the building that has the truly amazing ones overlooking Millenium Park, they have done a good job of staging art that seems to be complimented by it.  A lot of the stuff are old favorites from the collection which is nice (good to see the Picassos and the Pollock and the Chagall's and the Braques and all that and the Joan Miro and my favorite Spanish Dancer painting, oh and the candy pile that makes me sad and want to take a piece but I never do now that I know it symbolizes the death of the lover it is in memorial to), but other things are new or at least much less exhibited than the ones I listed above.

 

A video installation called "Clown Torture" which is so bizarre and so hilarious, made more hilarious by the many, many people who either clearly don't get it, just don't like it, or are scared of clowns.  It just made me laugh and laugh.  A giant fallen log made from a cast of a giant fallen log that was then carved in a different kind of wood, creepy lynching wallpaper room, and the room chock full of Joseph Cornell boxes were some of my favorites.  I bet I will go back to that room over and over because I feel like those boxes will reveal new things each time.  They are so beautiful but so lonely.

 

 

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So I wrote some more last night, just not a ton more.  I fear for this book, it is clearly on the path to not working as well as it should because we still haven't seen hide nor hair of the hero.  Whoops!  But I toy with two things, holding out hope that the book itself has a story salvageable from some of the filler that is being written and probably will continue to get written (thanks deadline) or the possibility of making it a romance novel where you meet ther hero as late as possible (which would be a very clear this book's plot will self destruct in ___ pages).  Although the second choice may be harder than just writing the dang thing and plugging forward.  I won't be writing today as I have a very full day, but I intend to bust at least a couple hundred to a couple thousand words out Saturday morning, and then I will have my three hour writing marathon on Sunday night to look forward to.

 

 

I kepp forgetting things

I put on a windbreaker over my lightweight sweater today feeling that would be sufficient to get to work warmly enough and light enough to cram into my bag on the way to rehearsal after work.  However, I realized AT work, that I had put my windbreaker on inside out.

 

Yes, yes I did this.

 

In my defense it is almost the exact same color red on the inside and on the outside, plus equally shiny.  It also is a fashion windbreaker rather than a sporty one, so it has no bungess, pockets, or random cordy-lumpy-sticky-outy things on it.  Just a little like ruching detail that isn't terribly bumpy.  So I walked to the bus stop, by many people, stood at bus stop on Michigan freaking Avenue with many people, and got onto fairly full bus (you know full of people) and no one mentioned that perhaps my coat was on wrong.  It seems wistful to hope that no one noticed.

 

Such is my life.

Oh, and Twitter

There is this guy I follow (not sure why back from my early days) who has been leaving an alarming number of tweets about his divorce.  LIke about signing the papers and taking off his ring, and I don't know him, and he is leaving them on a page that also mostly pimps the company he seems to co-own, and it makes me uncomfortable, plus he has like 4800 followers, so that seems like not something you should do.  AT ALL.  It has been creeping me out for more than a week, so I just unfollowed him.  Phew.

I am so squidgy

I am now.  I didn't used to be.  Or at least I am much more squidgy about things like buses and crazy neighborhoods now that I am so used to living in much more tony neighborhoods.  I think it is in part, that Sam's neighborhood is full of eyes at all times because every other building has a doorman and so do all the hotels, often more than one doorman.  They are standing or sitting and often looking out and around, and the hotel guys usually nod or say hello.  I have become accustomed this, so when I am in neighborhoods without the doormen at each building, I get squidgy.  Back in the day I lived in the neighborhoods I get squidgy about.  Now, I like to think I was aware and stayed reasonably safe.  Well I was fine, so I did stay safe, but I tried to avoid doing things that were really risky and even took longer routes home as needed depending on the time of day.

 

Last night I was on the Sheridan bus fairly late and found myself being extra squidgy.  I mean there was a dude on the bus who deserved squidginess, but nothing else did.  I even knew it was ridiculous, but there I was getting weird in my old age.  Sigh.  What to do.

 

Anyway, Sunday was a day full of house cleaning and rehearsal and Star Trek (which was GREAT and you should go see it, totally fun), and yesterday was full of work and rehearsal.  Rehearsal that was full of real acting.  Like REAL acting, like I haven't done in forever.  I have been just off as Alex lately, and I don't know why, like I think I am pitching strikes right at the catcher, but these pitches are going totally wild every time.  However, last nights rehearsal really helped a lot, and I just have to do some homework with myself and be a good actor.  Side note, it was also a good rehearsal because the director and I have now worked together enough that we just get eachother's process, so we can just lay things out and be honest and not need to get all angsty examining things--one of the best things about working on a project this long!

6035 and not even midnight

Well, I hit a roll and found not only the 5000 I needed for the week's goal, but am a day and some ahead before next week has even technically started. I intend to wake up and work on it a bit tomorrow before rehearsal, and then hope to steal some time with it over the week around rehearsals. I am probably going to need to take the laptop to work a few times, to type away at lunch and maybe even on longer bus and train rides. Oooh, I will feel so important novelizing on public transportation.

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So I just thought I was twice as far along as I really was. That is awesome, so I have two hours to get 613 words or I fail at my first deadline, and I am so letting myself be distracted by IM's with Chrissy who helped the cause by knowing the word syllabus!

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I have resorted to bad cliche and minute descriptions in order to put more words to my count. Although more and more odd people are beginning to populate the setting, my hometown not in any way concealed or veiled.

Whatevs, I have a hard enough time keeping the geography straight in real places much less fake ones, and this is a practice novel, just to get it done and accomplished and hid under the bed for all eternity if not ceremoniously burned. Anyways, I am going to stop for right now. Watch some Gray's Anatomy 100th episode, and maybe go back to it later tonight and certainly tomorrow morning. I may also bust out the help book Sally sent me for ideas on how to power through this slump or rather challenge, this challenge. At least I am close to where I should be today, and tomorrow's numbers are doable.

Ok, so I didn't write anything again last night

But I had a very full evening of driving all over Chicago to pick up my crew to go see 500 Clown MacBeth which I have seen before and totally love.  Sam, Jamie, and Chris went with me.  Jamie has seen their Christmas show live and this show on DVD, Chris has seen it on DVD, and Sam has nothing of theirs, so it was exciting to watch it with newbies.  It was awesome as it always is with the first half making me laugh so hard that my face hurt before the show itself devolves into serious moments that make me hold my breath and then lose some tears.  But it took up my whole evening, so no writing. 

 

Tonight however, there is a different agenda.  Tonight I am shooting for at least 1,000 words and another 1,500 tomorrow which means I meet my weekly goal.  Sunday is pretty jam packed, so I am secretly trying to double that amount for each day in order to pad for next week when I will have limited time because of rehearsals and because I am giving up my usual 3 hour Sunday writing window to go see Star Trek with people.

 

Also I walked all the way to work today.  1.8 miles broken up by a short trip into Dominick's to buy dessert for today's work luncheon.  It was a lovely walk, and I took a little detour through the Lurie Garden in Millenium Park which was cool, lovely, and brimming with Spring flowers this morning.  A wonderful start to the day!

Just odds and ends

I didn't write any yesterday, instead I went to bed early because I was very tired, but I am very glad to be welcoming Jim into the 5k a week for 10 weeks club.  He is at http://livewriteordei.wordpress.com so please help me encourage him on.

 

I really, really, really, really REALLY want an Amazon Kindle 2.  I check on it online every couple of days, and it is still really expensive, and I should start saving up for it now.  Although I have a $30 Amazon gift certificate, so that only leaves me like $329 dollars short.  Which you know is only a ridiculous chunk of my monthly paycheck, so whatever you know?  Plus we are saving up for a next generation TiVo box, so we can have dual tuner capabilities, more storage space, the ability to watch netflix on demand through it, and so we can put one in the bed room so Sam never misses an episode of friends ever and can watch some of them from bed as he falls asleep.  But when that has been purchased (as we are almost there on that one), I will start saving up for a Kindle.  Unless I get one for my birthday.  I did ask for one, but it is one of those presents that I feel bad asking for because they are quite expensive, and even if I would LOVE having one, I would feel bad getting one as a gift because they are expensive.  So we shall see.  Maybe I will just ask for an Amazon gift certificate that I will just apply to my Kindle purchase, maybe I will ask my family for those too?!  Then I would be very close to the end goal.  This may be the way to go.

 

Seeing 500 Clown MacBeth tonight with Chris, Jamie, and Sam.  It should be fun since it will be everyone else's first time seeing it live (Jamie and Chris have seen tapes of it).  I am way excited.

 

Last night I kind of live twitterd "Criminal Minds" because it had a few glaring factual errors.  They went to Bend, Oregon to solve a series of murders by car (or rather big truck) and it used as a set piece one if not two multi-story parking garages.  At this point I called bullshit because although a similar size east coast or even midwest town might have a parking garage or two at a hospital or a downtown area, Bend is in the middle of almost nothing and therefore, they pave, they don't build.  They might have one in the whole town, but I seriously doubt it, and they do not have two.  My twitter network seemed to confirm this.  They did pronounce Oregon correctly, but they also seemed to think the commute from Eugene to Bend would be something people may do for work which I again call bull shit as that would be around a 5 1/2 to 6 hour round trip.  Yeah they probably head to Eugene for shopping and things every once in a while but not terribly frequently.  I will give them the 8+ hour drive back from Napa Valley as an every once in a while thing, but that barely I give them.  It was just bugging me.  I hate it when they get things super wrong about the Pacific Northwest, although last season they did a decent job faking the Spokane area, so I will give them that.

New other blog post and a thing

http://www.barebonedtheatre.org/villeblog.html is the link to the second blog post for the Ville. 

 

The thing:  I am really overwhelmed and hugely excited by how helpful and supportive my blogosphere types have been to project novel that has barely just begun.  Seriously, you guys are wonderful and I really appreciate all your input in the comments!  Thank you, thank all of you so much.

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And I had to take a break today. I wrote nothing more yesterday because I had to go to the Ville and I was lazy after work and before bed. All I wanted was some How I Met Your Mother and sleep which is what I did. I was hoping to get to 2860 before the end of the day, and I just realized that I was much closer to that than I imagined. 170 more before the end of today totally possible. Also hoping to have taco salad for dinner tonight, and I should start cooking that soon.

Looking forward to Friday

Because as it stands I get it all to myself. From the moment I get home, it will be just me until probably lateish. I forsee an evening of novel writing, cat cuddling, and movie watching. Sam will be out with his coworkers at an employee event.

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Lots of writing tonight while Sam played piano at the bar. Hopefully I will stay ahead of the curve. That is my goal for all ten weeks, so hopefully I will be done before the ten weeks are over.

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And so it begins. I am a couple of paragraphs in and I have no real idea where it is going. Big city girl returns to her old home town due to a death in the family. Other than that, it is wide open!

Taking a break for now. Will be writing more tonight at the restaurant where Sam plays for three hours every Sunday. It seems that will be some prime writing time.

I will keep you all posted.

My mother and the email

My mother cannot remember my email address to save her soul. This was understandable back when I primarily used my hotmail address because it consisted of a series of kind of nonsense-y words some of which were spelled with numbers. There was really no hope that she would be able to remember it ever, and it was even kind of a stretch for her to write it down correctly.

About a year and a half ago I made the switch away from hotmail to another free internet email provider and I simplified and professionalized my email address. It is now resume friendly. It is my first name . my last name at (newprovider).com.

My mother gave me my first name, and I think she is aware of what it is, and we actually share the same last name, so there shouldn't be any spelling misunderstandings. And I have had the, "Now what is your email conversation again?" with her every few months for that entire time. At no point has it ever gotten shorter, like at no point has she gone, "Oh, oh yes, I know that one. OK."

Every. single. time. She asks, so it is heather? What? Oh ok. Wait, what does dot mean? Oh a dot is a period. Ok. Yeah. Then she will say it to me and it will be wrong. Now when my mother calls and I start to say my email address, Sam collapses into giggles and must leave the room because he finds it so seriously hilarious. I cannot fathom how she cannot remember it or for the love of god at least save it to her address book

Janeane Garofalo was AWESOME

I can't even begin to explain how wonderful she is. She is the funnest, coolest, awesome kind of girl ever. And her stand up was funny, but I cannot explain how. It was kind of like being at a party with someone who is 150% on while still being a good listener and only being mean to like Hannity and scary Fox News Republicans and not mean to anyone else.

I LOVE HER!!!!! Like I just love her. That is all I have.

She appeared with Mark Maron who was also great. His comedy was much more complicated and walked a pretty fine line between what most people would find funny and really awkward. And I admit to finding some of it uncomfortable. But I think my favorite thing about it was that he clearly loved watching his more complicated jokes hit the audience because they didn't hit everyone and the people they did hit sort of rolled into the joke in a wave. And he got such great satisfaction out of people running with his very hard, very smart comedy that he completely won me over. I also kept thinking how much Chrissy would like him.

There was also a local comic named Dan something, and I really liked his long geek based jokes. He got a lot of mileage out of being a big nerd and telling really long complicated jokes about the comic books he is a fan of and playing too much worlds of warcraft. I liked him, if I could remember his f ing name I would try to go see him again. It was kind of like Dan Fogelberg, but he obviously wasn't Dan Fogelberg.

what a busy bee i is

This weekend is just chock full of the fun!

 

Tonight, we have Jazz at the symphony center (an evening with Brad Meldhau) and then (like literally I will haul ass outside and grab a cab to haul ass to my seat at the LakeShore Theatre) Jeananne Garofalo.  Tomorrow night a late night preformance of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.  I am so full of stuff to do.

 

Also, I would like to announce my intention to write a novel in about two months.  Instead of the NaNoWriMo version of one month, I want to force myself to do something I can do.  May is rehearsal month for the Ville, and I just couldn't do my very on ChiMayWriMo and stay with it.  The end of the month would kill me, so I am adapting my own version.  5,000 words a week for 10 weeks or 50,000 words/end of novel that is at least 50,000 words--which means if I break 50,000 and finish novel before 10 weeks I stop writing.  I will hold myself to writing at least every third day, but this is asking me to average 715 words a day, so I will need to keep my nose to the grindstone.  I will update my progress here, and I would like all of you to please, please, please keep me to it.  Bet me.  Make demands on me that require me to embarass myself if I do not finish.  Conveniently, the week after my deadline is the reunion of the bitchbarn.  I will even give draft copies there to people who wnat them.  But please, keep me with it. 

 

Rules:

I start on Sunday.  So the 4th of July is my Independence Day (also my brothers wedding so I better get some serious typing done on the plane and around the festivities/

A week is Sunday to Monday.

I have to hit 50,000 words, or I am massive Fail.

 

And away we go.