Day Off

So we get one day off every two weeks. Always a Monday - it was yesterday. And it just made me incredibly crabby, because when you realize how short a day is, it's depressing.

I like acting as a primary profession, don't get me wrong, but I'm finding it difficult to eat, sleep, breathe, and choke nothing but this theatre and these people. To have just one day to "yourself" and to be dependent on someone who has a car to do something entertaining with that day gets pretty dreary.

I miss my autonomy. I am supposed to be a grown up, able to make my own decisions, but I have little power here. I'm dependent on a ride for anything more than getting to and from the theatre (and even there I need a ride when there's a downpour!), nearly all of my time is allotted throughout a day, and because I live with 11 women in a decrepid old house, it is impossible to keep my living space clean. Neat, sure. Clean, not possible. We don't even have a vacuum cleaner in the house. Of course, I live in the only carpeted room.

So today I am dissatisfied with everything and everyone and I've been snappy throughout the day. All the things you can imagine a gaggle of actors doing have been PISSING ME OFF. Let's have a bullet list for a moment, yes?

-People listening to musicals on their earphones, but singing aloud to them, because of course, you clearly want to hear what they are hearing, which is why they are wearing HEADPHONES

-People telling me how good I am at playing old women. Thanks, really. When I'm 60 I'll actually have work. Great.

-People who can't stop talking - often about something I clearly have no interest in. One girl took 15 minutes to convince me her sorority was the best ever and not like any other sorority and she was very Important in it. I AM 31 YEARS OLD. I WILL NOT BE JOINING YOUR SORORITY AND I DON'T CARE HOW IMPORTANT YOU ARE IN IT.

-The college kids who have no idea life exists outside of college. Someone was all hot and bothered the other day about what shows the college was doing this upcoming year, and I tried to explain that in 5 or 10 years, none of them would be able to REMEMBER what shows they did in college, but it's impossible to convey that the world might be bigger than that.

-The 20 year olds who have already planned their wedding. Sure, it could work, sure, they could be with their current partner forever. It's possible. But likely? No. You know why? Because you probably haven't even begun to know who you are yet.

-The tiny, beauty pagent winner who has a constant diet of sugar. Tonight, chocolate chip pancakes. I have enough trouble not hating her because she's beautiful - throw in the parade of things I like eating but shouldn't (she eats them without a change to her seemingly surgically altered figure - I don't that it has been, but that's how stupid perfect her tiny little body is), and honestly, I am thinking more and more about snapping her body like a dry twig by sitting on it.

-I am really over the fact that we only have one working toliet in a house of 11, soon to be 12. The plumber came to fix one of the two we had, but found that the floor was so rotten that until the floor was repaired, he couldn't replace the toliet. That was last week, and we've had a big gaping hole in the floor ever since. We covered it with a garbage bag because it was unsettling to see the basement through the floor.

-All the people reading who aren't making smart-alecy, Elizabeth-you-know-you're-right comments! I'm stuck here, people, if you have a minute, put your two cents in and say hello! (I know who some of you are, too...)

I should go to bed. Another day, another day to self-medicate the irritation with chocolate and Cheez-its.