#4 - Tiff

 

You and your sister first taught me how to love a child,

love no matter what, love no action can undo.

So I had my own child, and life has been

often murky, a late Turner of uncertainty,

But with sunlight always discernible.

Landscapes will sharpen in time.

Love will always enlighten.

Thanks for the lesson.

With love, Elizabeth

#3 - Susan

We are adventurers, you and I.
Who would have expected stillness from either of us?
Expected (relatively) unchanging addresses?

Is it any surprise our minds are sometimes far away?

No fear - even eagles make nests
and sit in them, for a time.

It does not change their wingspan.

With love, Elizabeth

 

Decade One: Kid Times

 As I think about life and who's been important to me, I keep looking for photos. This is tricky because there are plenty of things that were incredibly important to me that I have no photos of, and conversely things that I have a ton of photos of that I don't care about or don't remember.

But here's a super fun memory photo:

This is, I *think*, my fifth birthday, which my mom arranged as a "dress-up" party. In my memory, this was COMPLETELY AMAZING. I wore an old dress of my aunts, I think, with that enormous silk bow in my hair, and everyone else had fun hats and gloves and such - you can see the fab chunky necklace on the kid next to me in blue! It's 1979, and we are dressed to the nines and eating chocolate cake.

I have no idea what else we did at this party - we were in fancy clothes so we couldn't have done much, but everyone looked great. 

#2 - Eddie

From you, I noticed
Silence is a kind of listening - 
Music is a kind of speech.

I'm hankering for squash casserole,
stories of my grandparents,
and Friday night jam sessions in the GA mountains.

With love, Elizabeth

#1 - Peter

 

#1
To Simon Peter

How do I begin?
Heave my heart into my mouth
wrestle it to paper?
Can I gild these words so the joy of you shimmers?

Your handwriting on a page - 
an illuminated manuscript - 
has always brought me glee.
I must begin with you.

The farthest stars can still shine brightest.
My delight of you ripples forwards (anticipation)
and backwards (jeweled memory),
you are the shift in all these seas.

With love, Elizabeth

Decades, the project

 So. 2024. This year I turn 50. I have lots and lots of postcards I never sent. I have lots of people I'd like to partially thank for what they mean to me. And I would like to start writing again, at least a little. 

This is the start of the Decades Project: With Love, Elizabeth

Each week I'm sending a postcard to someone in my past (or present!) with a short poem on it and "With love, Elizabeth."

50 postcards, for 50 years of life, 50 weeks out of the year.  Oh, the year has 52 weeks, you say?  Yes, I decided I get my birthday week and the last week of the year off.

I've already made a list of the 50 people, I even tried to pick approximately 10 folks from each decade of my life, though I'm not making myself send them in that order.

I'm trying to keep the project open for lots of reasons - a postcard isn't a lot of space, I'm not sure how this will go, etc., but I am setting myself two small...let's call them goals, not even rules. 

1. I spend the week thinking about that person and making multiple drafts of a postcard poem to them. 

2. While I hope the 50 postcard poems will connect, I'm more interested in the person I've picked that week. Something in the poem has to be person-specific. It may not be literal, but they are a gesture of thanks for the impact the person has had in my life.

Oh, I might jot down more info here on occasion. But the info and the experience is meant for me, to inspire me with gratitude and thankfulness for all the people I've been lucky enough to know. This is unlikely to turn into any big thing. It's just, a weekly hello to people I love. And a way to wear down my excessive stack of extra postcards.

Itchy

It's starting to feel as if there's no point to me.  You know those times when everyone else seems better at what you do than you?  That's what I'm in now.  The part of me that knows how to play, how to function creatively, is stalled out, and that never feels fun.

I can't even put words together in interesting ways right now: "that never feels fun."  Where's the lift in that, the scope or the poetry or the sigh or the wail?  Where's the balloon release of it?  It just sits there, metallically, like a piece of something you dismantled that you couldn't find a place for when you put it back together, it sits and glowers at you for failing to find its purpose.

This is when you look in the mirror and only see grey hairs, only see the age, the weight, the milage of your face.  There's no wisdom there to balance it, no earned grace or maturity, just someone past their prime aging badly.  You're the mom on the teen show: tolerated, humored, sidelined.  Your chance to be integral to the narrative has long since passed, and you are a minor character in your own life, ricocheting from reaction to reaction, always in motion towards or away from some more important character's views.

This is when you go running and instead of endorphins, there are shin splints and sore hip sockets.  When you run you think of all the years you didn't, and you realize you can never catch up, never run far enough or long enough to outpace all the bad decisions you made then.

You can't do your taxes, it's too depressing.  Facing down the slow slide of your money into nonexistence would take a backbone you don't have.

You can't leave town and get a fresh perspective: you're in that wilderness between the youthful backpacker and the aged tourist, and your responsibilities hold you firmly in place.  Maybe you were never a butterfly at all, but the pin that holds your moth body to the placard is just as inexorable, just as inescapable.

You need some imagination, some belief.  You need some romance and some sleep.  You need to be the one who tells a story and holds everyone rapt - it doesn't even need to be your own story, it just needs to be your pacing, your artistry that holds them.  You need to matter.

But today you don't.  Today, the best tactic you've got is to furl your wings and pack them away for now.  And somewhere inside, very privately, you nurse the hope that there will come a day where you unfurl them, let them catch the wind, stretch them very wide, leap ahead, and find yourself again airborne, laughing, laughing, laughing.

That face

I've been very quiet.  I can blame it on being the mother of a brand new baby in terms of having less free time, but that's only part of the equation.  The other part of the equation is that being a mother to this particular baby has been so delicate and beautiful, I have trouble writing it down.  She's terrific, and now, close to a year old, she's full of smiles and hugs and wanting to be near mama.  It's incredible.  And lucky, so lucky.  I know people who don't want kids, can't have kids, have kids and regret it, have kids and love them hard but have given up much of who they are for those kids.

And folks, none of that is wrong.  It's just life.  The hard thing about writing about kids especially is that it's such a charged issue, such a sensitive subject, that anything I say has the whiff of being a judgement on someone else.  Instead, within reason, I honestly think the vast majority of parents are just trying to do what's best for their kids.  Whatever choices those parents are making, if you were following their every footstep, their decisions in context would probably make sense.

This also allows for the fact that parents screw up a lot.  I have begun to see that as long as parents love their kids and don't concentrate on the screw ups, the screwups aren't that important (barring injury, bodily harm or mental abuse, of course).

OF COURSE I see parents doing things and think, whoo boy, no way, that's not for me.  But I do try to live and let live.  So I've been careful not to write much about the choices we're making, because I think it opens one up to a kind of criticism I just don't need, and implies a kind of criticism of others that I heartily dislike.

Soooo, that having been said:

We're so lucky.  My daughter is absolutely capable of whining and crying, but overall she's a happy, cheerful, curious ball of love.  She sleeps pretty well overall, not when we're traveling but when we're home and on schedule, and she's usually very interested in other people and new things.  She seems smart and capable and healthy (my god we're so lucky with that one, it's so out of our hands), and far from being a drain on my energy, she's been really enjoyable to watch develop.

Now, what I've let slide is my sense of self.  I find it very tricky, trying to provide for my daughter's very reasonable needs and still hang on to my own also reasonable needs.  There's a balance there I haven't achieved.  But I spend time on each side of the fence, and I have a terrific husband who thinks about me as much as he thinks about her.  (This is especially incredible because I don't do the same for him - granted, this first year a lot of the care has fallen on me due to breastfeeding, so his part of that is to take care of me, still, plenty of men don't.  Again, see above: lucky.)

I have to believe that working to be a whole person can only help my daughter as we move forward, that teaching her by example that women have identities and purpose beyond their family will be positive.

See, in my experience, having a kid doesn't make you grow up because of lost sleep or needing more money or anything like that.  You're forced to behave better than you otherwise would because someone is watching your every move, and your every move is shaping them.

I can't afford to behave childishly anymore.  I've got a child who does that, and I have to teach her better.

Shoulda Seen That Coming

Oof.  So I went to see a big shiny musical yesterday.  And it was lovely.  It had people in it I know from being in other big shiny musicals.

I find it really difficult not to feel terrible about myself when I go see people who work all the time, because my brain bounces back and forth between - why can't that be me and clearly I am not working all the time because I'm not talented enough.

Neither of which are useful things to have running through one's head, no matter what the truth might be.

But I was thinking, hey, I just had a baby, I get time off for good behavior, right?  I'm not on stage, but at home I have this cute little awesome person that I adore, and that's worth not being in a trillion shows.

Then, waiting to hug people I knew afterwards, it became clear that the woman who played the lead (beautifully, I must add)...(WAIT FOR IT)...has a baby.

A baby.

So, folks, yes, the answer is that I am just not that great, just not on the career path.  Because turns out, having a baby apparently only keeps me from working.  Other people, more successful, talented people, work all the time.

Don't start with me, I know despair isn't attractive.  I just have no other response to this series of information.

Next week I start rehearsals for a show I'm understudying - and I genuinely don't feel bad I didn't get cast, because the woman I'm understudying is phenomenal, and I love her.  I can only hope going to rehearsal helps me feel less like the hack I feel right now.

(By the way, the baby is still really cute.  Mine, that is.  I still love her to bits.)

Too much

Sometimes, it's not that I have nothing to say, it's that I have so much to say, all contradictory, and not nearly enough time to write it all down.  But if I write the one thing without the contradiction, it won't represent what I really feel, it will just be a blip from one minute side of the question.

This is probably why I resort to bullet lists so frequently.

Anyway, there's a lot going on, most of it good.  And now I need a nap.

No, need a nap.  Turns out there's a difference between need and want.

Then he broke the faucet

I thought last week would be hard, because I was at home with my daughter pretty much on my own, for eight days.  I had a little break half way through, and an assist from a friend for an hour here and there to go running, but it was just me and her for eight days.

It wasn't hard, turns out.  I had cleared my schedule for the most part, so I could really focus on her and on whatever needed to happen.  There were very few distractions, and everyone I went to hang out with was very understanding about having an occasionally vocal four-month-old around.

Turns out, what was hard was this week, when I abruptly came back to being around the entire world (instead of my selected super-understanding cohort of specially sympathetic friends), the "real" world, if you will.

In the real world, I am now only an accessory to the cuteness of my daughter, and have ceased to have very much personhood.

It's not her fault, by the way.  She's a baby, and she's not unreasonable or fussy or difficult.  She's smiley and adorable and really only makes noise when she's hungry, dirty, or bored.  I want her to grow and turn into a person I'd like to be around, so I want to give her the things she needs, because then she'll be healthy and secure enough to be interested in the rest of the world.

It just turns out, sometimes it's really hard to give a child all the things they need and have enough time left to be much of a person yourself.  It doesn't last, by the way - thought I am sure there are always decisions between what you need for yourself and what your child needs - but the really intense time is now, and we're moving through it fairly well.

Just not today.  Today I feel like I had to press "pause" on life, and today I miss my life.  Today I worry if I'll ever get to be in a play again, or sing worth a damn for any band or musical, or write more than a thank you note, or even read an entire book without having to stop a trillion times.  Or even have a conversation without interruption. (Or fit into my old clothes.)

"Nope!"  laugh other parents out there.  "No, you won't, sugar!  Get used to it!"

My husband came home from 10 days away and had to literally leave the house within the hour to start working on a different part of his work-life.  He's great, he really works hard to make sure I'm able to do things outside the house, but the reality of his situation is that within 24 hours of achieving his graduate degree, he had other fires to work on putting out.   (Also, before he left, he broke the faucet. Sigh.)

I get it, I do.  I try really hard not to feel far down on his list of priorities because he constantly tries to put me and her first.  It's just...

By the time it's ever my turn out of the house again, I will probably have no skills/interests/talents/viability left.

I don't really believe that.  Do I?  Maybe just today I do.

And let's get into the hardest part, the probable reason for this glum mood -  it was really hard to get my daughter to sleep tonight.  She cried.  Hard.  I had to put her down crying.  She calmed down and went to sleep, but my last psychic glimpse of her, this tiny person I'm giving up myself for, was of a truly distraught tiny creature, unhappily wailing.

It hurts me.  It's so hard to have her cry like that.  I hate it.  The fact that she went to sleep within five minutes means she was crying because she just wanted to fight the sleep, and I know that, and thus I know I'm still doing the right thing for her, but she's often such a happy thing, that listening to the crying is draining emotionally.

Because here's the thing.  If you feel, however wrongly or in passing, that you're giving up your self for another human being, and yet the feedback you're getting implies that you're not doing a very good job...

...then it's a rough day.

Y'all, I love her so much.  Here's hoping she wakes up with a smile.

In happier news, the faucet is already fixed.

What's going on

I don't trust myself to write a lot intended to be shoved out here in a public space right now.  First, with an infant taking up nearly all my waking hours, everything is changing moment to moment.  I'm thrilled then I'm sad then I'm bored then I'm frustrated then I'm charmed then I'm terrified.  Additionally, I have a ton of hormones still running through my system that I neither understand nor control.  Apparently I will have them until I stop breastfeeding.  Awesome.

For instance, this morning I was convinced I am a terrible mother.  And I bet if I didn't write it down, I'd forget about it, and someday I would look back on this period and think, hmm, I did a pretty okay job, all things considered.  But of course if I write about it right now, instead I'll color my memories with the self doubt that listening to your child cry engenders.  But if I write about it, I might be able to make sense of it in my mind.  But if I write about it, I might begin, and the sound of crying may force me to stop halfway and I'll have yet another abandoned post.  (There are quite a few.)

Also, earlier today my husband asked: is there anyone you can talk to about any of this (meaning the parenting decisions I'm making)?  And when I thought about it, I realized: in a way, the answer is "no".  Because parenting philosophies are really personal, charged decisions and everyone gets defensive about whatever choices get made.  But every kid is different.  So while yes, someone out there has probably lived through a similar situation, I don't know that person, and the people I do know are more likely to be aghast that I'm trying any sort of sleep training this young, or never needed it because their child never had problems sleeping all night long. (Sheesh.)

It's knowing that if I ask one set of people, they'll tell me I should abandon my current course altogether, whereas if I ask another, they'll tell me I need to toughen up.  Neither feel exactly right for this kid at this time.  But I can't guarantee any of what I am doing is helping.  I'm just guessing in the dark right now, trying different stuff, which unfortunately ruins any attempt at consistency.  Consistency is supposed to be the best tool at your disposal.  But how can you be consistent when you can't tell what works?

It. is. tricky.

And then sometimes my daughter will push up with her legs and stand on my knees, and smile and smile, and make little squealy raptor noises, and then it doesn't matter that I'm surviving on so few hours of sleep every single night, it doesn't matter if she cries when it's naptime, the erosion of who I am doesn't matter because it's being replaced by who I'm going to be with this new person in my life, once she figures out who she is.

Because though I can't really call it a two-way street yet, I added a lot of love to my life when we had her.

Which is worth every item of clothing I have being covered in spit up for the next year or so, right?

So much wasted time

In a way, it's lucky that my current phone somehow won't track how long each call is. It tells me what time the call originated, but not when it ended, and thus, not the duration.  I miss this feature - I lost it when I was forced to change carriers recently (ours got bought).

But that means I can't go back and tabulate how many hours I have spent on hold trying to sort out my health insurance and that of my new daughter.  I am in no way exaggerating when I put the estimate in terms of 25-30 hours on hold since December.  I'm probably underestimating.  Every time I think I have it sorted out - and I mean, just getting the coverage, not even dealing with any of the claims as of yet - something happens and I get to spend another round of waiting to talk to people.  I think my record is three hours and twenty minutes on hold at Blue Cross Blue Shield.

And a lot of this is for stupid details: I thought I sorted it all out in January, only to be sent an id card with my name misspelled.  This came from an agency that has access to my social security number.  Surely they could match that with my name?  I mean, they're going to need to access my taxes, it will really help to be asking for the correct person's information.

Now I'm suddenly enrolled in a program that might be a huge help, but the information tells me it costs one thing, and the invoice they're asking me to pay is six times that.  So...huhn? Which means...oh dear god...I'm back on hold.

All of these calls are much trickier with an infant on hand, you know.

On the positive side, I figure if there's a purgatory, I'm shortening my time there as we speak.  Or rather, as we don't speak, as we wait on hold for someone to speak to.

Sigh.

Quick ones

This will be a lightening fast post, because my daughter is squirming away on a mat at my feet, and she will get bored at some point and require me to stop.

It's just, I cast my eye across one of my posts from November - oh-so-anxious-will-I-even-love-this-baby, and I feel compelled to go on record:

I totally love this baby.  I am absolutely in love with this baby.  And there are lots of anxieties, but they've changed into ones about her, not about me.  I still worry if we can make enough money to take care of her.  I still worry we can take care of her (there's a lot about babies I still find bewildering).  But she is beautiful and joyful in a way I really couldn't imagine.  When she sleeps, I look at pictures of her.  When she's awake, I like to nuzzle her baby-soft head.  When she cries, I hold her and try to make it better.  I love seeing her smile when I come pick her up.  Heck, I love seeing her smile anytime.  She is glorious. And she's not even fully a person yet.  I can't wait to see how much I love her when she's truly interactive, when she's fully exploring the world, when she can talk and laugh and crawl around.

I want to go on record to say: if you don't want kids, can't have kids, or for whatever reason won't end up with kids, that is not a problem.  There are a lot of things in life I won't do, and it doesn't take away from their value that I don't do them, and it doesn't take away from my value that I don't do them.  So please, when I wax poetic, I'm just telling you about what's going on with me.  It's incredible...for me.

And with that out of the way, let me get back to my bundle of utter adorableness.  She's so freakin' cute, y'all.  I luuuurve her.

Yep

Turns out, a baby takes considerable time and effort.  I expected that.  What they don't tell you is that it takes all the hands you have, and if the baby doesn't nap at convenient times, you don't have time to use both hands.

Also, when you pick midwives because they have a 15-20% cesarean rate, you just don't figure you will be the 15-20% getting one.

So, recovering from major surgery here, with a baby.  Who last night did not sleep.

Technically, this makes me a mommyblogger.  But truthfully, I am no blogger at all for the next few weeks.  Hopefully, I'll be back and can catch all 4 of you up on the highs and lows.  There are lows, ugh, so low, but happily, there are highs.  And I promise cute baby pictures at some point.

Not helping

Lovely husband:  It's 2014.
Me: Yep.  Here we are.
LH: You're going to start having contractions pretty much any time now.
Me:  Yeeessss...um, thanks for the reminder?
LH:  It's probably going to hurt.
Me:  This is not as helpful as you think it is.
LH:  This is the year we have a baby.

Happy New Year, folks.  It's a threshold here in my world - I hope it's a bridge to all of the next for you as well.  More when my fingers start working again.  (Don't ask: pregnancy turns out to be seriously inconvenient towards the end. At least that's my experience.)

Well, this has been fun

The last couple of weeks have not been my favorite.  Family stuff blew up, and I blew up, and the residual feelings of blame, guilt and regret are not helping the general terror I have at the oncoming baby.

Oh, have I not mentioned?  I'm terrified.  When I say this aloud, as lightly as possibly, people tend to ask something like - terrified of having a child, or terrified of the labor?  Yes.  Yes.  All of the above.

Starting with first things first, the whole impending labor is utterly terrifying.  There will be pain.  Lots of pain.  Possibly the most intense pain I've ever had to deal with, for an unspecified length of time, which could drag on quite ponderously.  And the more I learn about this pain, the more I realize - I have to at least give it a go.  Because if I take the drugs (and I have no political agenda, if I really feel I can't do it, I'll take the drugs), the drugs get in the way of what really should happen.  The body has a plan, a set of tactics that will aid the whole process, and once I take the drugs, I interrupt the setup created by thousands of years of evolution.  So...I have to try to avoid the drugs, try much harder than I once thought.

But let's look at labor as a finite amount of time that will eventually pass.  I'm terrified, but it will end.  But as it ends, the terror is just beginning!  If we make it through, if the baby is healthy, then I get to start an entire lifetime of taking care of this brand new human being.

I'm terrified I'll make a mess of it.
I'm terrified I'll lose every part of myself to this new responsibility.
I'm terrified the baby won't be healthy.
I'm terrified I won't be healthy.
I'm terrified the baby will never sleep and will never stop crying.
I'm terrified I'll discover I have no capability to take care of this thing.

I'm also terrified that I won't ever be able to think beyond it again, or think of anything else without feeling like a bad mother.  I wanted to have a family to have a bigger life, not have my life narrow down into simply being a caretaker.

And I'm terrified to hit post on this, because I don't love the idea of being judged for feeling this way.  Also, the internet never goes away.  What if I love my child with every fiber of my being when he or she gets here, and all of this fear fades into the background, but someday he or she stumbles upon this?  I could be damaging my favorite human being just by being honest about how I'm feeling right now. (Ok, inkling, if you're reading this, just know I hadn't even met you yet, you were just some kicking keeping me awake and making me feel like an unattractive walrus.  Judge me by how I am with you now, not by this.)

Man, this parenthood thing is triiiicky.  I already feel as if I'm proving to be absolute crap at it. (Inkling, for your sake I hope I get better really quickly.)

Right.  I guess...enough whining.  This was my choice, and fear is an indicator that I am doing something that will force me to grow as a human being.

Perhaps the greater the fear, the greater the coming growth.

Perhaps.

I guess I have to hope so.  And I have to figure out something to hold on to during the fear.

Great question

A friend saved my life today by asking me a very interesting question.

"What's the thing you're looking most forward to, having a baby?"

And I realized that for the moment, if I were being super honest, I would have said, nothing, but I couldn't really say that so I had to reach into my mind and turn it inside out.  I need an attitude adjustment.  Because yes, this whole process is terrifying, but I wouldn't be going through it if I didn't want to have children.  I do want to have children.  I have always wanted to have children.  I like them, I like being around them and I get a lot of enjoyment from the ones I teach.

I told him I'm looking forward to being there to watch a child discover things for the first time, to be able to introduce the things I love to another person who will be (at least for the first 5-6 years) consistently blown away by the world.  And I was sort of making that answer up, but as I said it, it also felt really true.  I am looking forward to that.  "What thing will you be most excited about introducing him or her to?" my friend asked, and I said everything, I mean, dinosaurs!  How cool are dinosaurs!  And that's just the beginning.  But when I thought about it more, my answer is: story.  I'm most excited to introduce story to my child.  Music a close second.

Ever since that moment, I've realized how much fear is running me for the moment.  I'm not proud of that, though I can give myself a break and admit it's pretty reasonable and normal.  I'm so frightened of what I may be losing and how painful this change is going to be that I have no space to dwell on the amazing thing I may get in return.  Because even without story or dinosaurs or music or anything else, I'm about to bring more love into the world.  Maybe more of some other things, too, maybe a little more mess or order or science or art (or crazy), but no matter what, I can teach a child to love, and my family can help, and that will ricochet through our lives forever.

I'm mostly still terrified.  And I do deeply fear losing myself to this person who doesn't exist yet.  But a tiny corner of my brain opened up this week to the idea that maybe, just maybe, this might be fun.

Just gonna get harder

This was the week being pregnant really wasn't pleasant.  I've been sailing through relatively easily, but this week a car wreck, plus traveling in a plane to a place with air dry enough to give me nosebleeds, plus possibly the beginnings of hemrrhoids (yep, joy), plus swelling in my ankles and feet, plus true exhaustion born of aforesaid travel, all combined to make me fairly miserable.

The anxiety is really coming to the forefront, as well.  This is truly scary, having a child, and I have no idea what I'm doing, or even to some extent why some days.  I don't know if this child will be healthy, or someone I can like.  I don't know if I can make enough money to support him/her (we still don't know). I don't know if I will end up giving up all of what I want and what I love to support and care for this being who will be in a pretty basic mode for the first year or so.  It's terrifying.  And that's just anxiety about the baby itself...what about the birth??  That's truly terrifying as well - pain I cannot even imagine.  Truth be told, going through the nine months of pregnancy is pretty troubling, since you really do give up an entire lifetime of understanding what your body does and how it behaves for months of uncertainty and new limits on what you can do every day.  It's a slow losing of oneself, and that's difficult for me (and probably most people, really).

I hope after the birth I come back to this blog and write how much it's all worth it.  I already know how lucky I am to be pregnant at all.  When I actually meet this person my body is creating, I hope to be blown away by the event.  Because there's no getting around the fact that I am doing this, and the only other alternatives to going through childbirth and caring for the baby are so sad and heartbreaking they don't bear thinking about.

What a difference

I forget every single time.  I get bogged down in something that isn't theatre - no rehearsals, not in a show, whatever - and I forget that I physically need it, like Vitamin C, to function.  Then I get a dose from somewhere and, bam!  I perk up, the jaundice fades, life gets sparky again.

This does worry me about having a baby. Naturally.  Heh.  Because it's definitely going to be a while until I can do much of anything.  Heh.

But guys!  Guys!  I did a play reading last night, and I felt so differently afterwards it was astonishing.  And here's the nice part - reading that play, sitting there trying to do justice to a story with lots of other people to bounce off of and react to, I could actually feel power coming back online.  I could feel the medicine working.  And I could feel myself being good at this.

Ok, that sounds obnoxious.  Sorry.  There are still lots of people who are way better.  I don't mean I'm amazing.  But I can say I have experience and enthusiasm, and even occasional flashes of talent.  It was a really lovely night.

On the strength of it, I managed to get the hell out of bed this morning and exercise, and start working my way through a pile of things that need to get done.  Because when you're an actor, you're supposed to act, or else what's the use of talking?  And when you do act, you get the nutrients you need from life.

Bless that man for asking me to take part.  And universe....you need to book me something for after this baby.  Because I want to be there and enjoy it and have a great time having a kid, and I will be worse than useless if there's nothing to give me this feeling.