Well, well...

If there's anyone who has been wondering why they haven't heard from me, I've been in bed sick for four days. Well, three. I should have gone home to bed the first day I felt horrible, but I had a whole progressive dinner celebrating Valentine's planned and couldn't bear to give it up.

I mean, of course, if you've wondered why you haven't heard from me in real life. Of course I rarely keep solid tabs on this blog.

While ill, I've had my first substantial talks with my mother since the series of meltdowns recently. Naturally, by substantial I mean "lengthy", as I have not had the mental capacity to try to discuss issues that upset me. And being sick, I was hard pressed to care. You have to believe some change will come of the dicussion in order to put much into it.

She keeps making the most confusing comments, placatory (is that a word? it should be), as if to make up to me. As if, seriously, someone had gotten ahold of her and read her the riot act. Which is possible - my dad's done it before, and not just on my behalf. He wades in to protect my brother and sister-in-law, too.

The sickness has made it worse, too, because she's fussing over me. Or does that make it better? That's the impression I have, without having any hard facts. I suppose it could just be that, having gotten mostly her way, she can afford to jolly me along? That's the cynic's view.

By the way, when I say "gotten her way" I mean that I'm getting response cards from people who were NOT ON the invitation list we put together. If I knew THAT was allowed, there are quite a few of you reading who would have gotten an invitation.

So now my mom, who hates paying more than $12 for a haircut (which is what she paid back in 1988 and why should it get more expensive?) is talking about going to the swanky salon where I'm getting my hair done for some wedding photos. It does seem like a spy tactic. Why on earth doesn't she just ask if she can come with? I mean, right now I sigh a little sigh, because there's nothing quite like my Mom's disapproval to take the joy out of spending money she thinks I'm wasting, but I can at least appreciate that she might want to join in, even find it a lovely gesture.

Or better yet, her opening salley (sally? hmmm) this weekend was something like, "We've cleared our calendars and we're all set to adore you." I didn't even touch this one, I wasn't sure what kind of firecracker that was. She's talking about me going to SC this coming weekend. Firstly, the weekend is a) about my brother's birthday and b) the weekend of the church retreat for my parents, so it is a weekend anything but clear. Secondly, I don't really need adoring. Respecting, as I detailed in an earlier post, but adoring, ehn, no.

Her whole demeanor has me deeply puzzled, and really just a whisker shy of suspicous. I'm not sure what I'm being buttered up for, or more importantly, why on earth this is the brand of buttering up?

In other news, although coughing up a lung while deathly ill turns out to be a fairly consistent way of losing that last pesky five pounds, I really, really can't recommend it. From now on, my advice to others will be in favor of altering the dress and retouching the photos.

Departure

There's this girl who goes to the same gym I do. Our gym is small, fairly cheap, and in an area with a large student population, and there's a particularly high number of actors and students who use this gym. A few years ago (before joining the gym) I saw a sketch comedy performance with a group who was making fun of yoga. Vaguely amusing, one of the performers was a small Asian-American girl whose body was tiny. She was wearing a leotard and tights so you could see that there was simply no extra meat on her anywhere. And in the sketches, she played a particularly irritating person.

I disliked watching her, and her tiny body made me dislike her even more.

When I started going to this gym, I saw her, recognized who she was from the performance, and began to settle in to my irrational and completely based-on-fiction dislike. And she was in there ALL THE TIME. And she was always using the ellipitcal machine veeerrrrryyyy slowly. Much later it finally occurred to me she probably had it set on a very taxing resistance, meaning her body was working too hard to move quickly, but for some reason the slowness just bugged me.

A year or so ago, I was reading a profile of a young actress in a smash hit of a new play. Now, these make me jealous anyway, because of course I wish *I* could be in a smash hit and had people interview *me*. But suddenly I realized that this must be the girl from the gym. I looked up the production photos online and yep, it was her.

But in the profile, she'd revealed several beguiling and tantalizing pieces of information. She is estranged from her mother - that's word the article used, "estranged", she thought she'd gained weight because she ate incessantly while doing the show, she felt there weren't a lot of roles available to an Asian. I suddenly had a great deal of intimate knowledge about someone I have yet to speak to.

She only rarely irritates me anymore. It's so fascinating, knowing I have a window into who she is (though perhaps a cloudy window - who knows how much the article got right), knowing I have information about her and she has no idea I know these things. And I can see the danger in being a person that gets interviewed, in the paper or anywhere else. When everyone has your secrets at their fingertips, where is your mystery? But it's also true that the information I know now has humanized this person to me, and I find myself sympathetic with her instead of irritated by her.

Which sympathy is equally false, of course, because I don't know her at all.

Interesting...I wish

I've opted out of theatre projects in order to make sure I can deal with my own wedding, and I gotta tell you...

I'm walking that tightrope between indolence and boredom.

I mean, yes, it's nice to sit and watch television.

For an evening. And then I get bored. I do a lot of running from job to job and audition to rehearsal and it gets really tiring. But it doesn't take that long without all the rushed pace to be bored.

I'm less likely to use the time to do anything for anyone else, either, which is lousy of me, but true. I have time on my hands, I get lazy.

Now, I have enjoyed some lounging, don't get me wrong. A little indolence is a beautiful experience, and I like doing my impression of a cat in a sunny window. And some of my boredom is the weather - I had somewhere to be on Saturday night that would have been highly entertaining, but it was -20 wind chill and gusts of up to 50 mph were projected. The best route I could find to this party involved walking for a mile. I just could not do it. I lay on the couch and went nowhere for about 6 hours. (I had gone to the gym earlier, I'll have you know.)

So if it were 45 degrees out, I'd be much more able to amuse myself. I'd probably bike somewhere interesting and look around and have an adventure.

But not when it is -20. Just...no...

All's right with the world

Ok, so it's just a wedding, and although Martha Stewart has programmed us to think it has to be *just so*, it's actually just a day when the love-pumpkin and I promise to each other that we'll be faithful and true. While other people watch. And though I wish I had endless time to make thousands of little paper boxes or a personalized stamp on everyone's "favor" gift of a bag of grits, I don't really care if this turns out to be the wedding of the season. Like any woman alive, if I had unlimited money and time and the ability to do whatever I wanted, I would probably put together an amazing celebration that all the attendees would talk about for years.

However, three things:

1) The most beautiful wedding I have ever been to, a stunning, romantic, unforgettable event, sealed a relationship that has already ended with the divorce of the couple. Less than five years.

2) The most horrible wedding I have ever been to - and I base this judgment partly on the fact that none of the participants looked as if they were enjoying it, not merely that I didn't enjoy it - produced a marriage that is still going strong, producing children and making the couple happy like a pair of clams.

3) No matter what happens, at least one attendee will be bored and not like it. No matter what. The numerical odds are too high.

That being said, the butternut squash and I are going to have a beautiful wedding, and I am happy we're getting married. We started some pre-marital counseling this week, and it made me realize how lucky I am/we are. My sugarfoot was willing but less that thrilled - why call the repair guy if nothing is broken? was his analysis. I countered with the concept of getting medical screens to prevent problems before they become fatal. My pigeon said as long as the therapist was hot, he'd be fine. After rolling my eyes, I explained I preferred to refer to this experience as "counseling" because I didn't want to imply I believed something was wrong that we needed to fix.

Both a little nervous, we braved a winter storm to head off to counseling.

The first thing our undeniably hot counselor asked was, "So, what brings you to therapy?"

I should have seen the smirk from across the room - my word jammer was thinking a) this woman is hot, and b) see, it IS called therapy.

Anyway, the process should be interesting, and I don't plan to detail it from now on, but the whole evening made me think, hey, I know this man pretty well, and I trust him. I know we aren't perfect (there are stories, some of them already on here somewhere) and our relationship isn't everyone's dream, but it makes me really happy, and bonzo really happy.

When asked, how would you characterize the relationship, what leapt to mind was, "Well, there's a lot of snuggling."

I've been doing a lot of venting and complaining here, and sometimes I miss the chance to remind myself how lucky I am.

Also, I watched Teen Witch last night, and who can resist that?