Weighty. (Rimshot)

Dear Scale:


I think we both know what this is about. I don't pay much attention to you, and I think you're ok with that. However, I thought maybe I had misjudged you. Perhaps you and I could coexist. Not a friendship, per se, but some kind of mutual agreement where we can share a space. I might even allow you into my home. Perhaps if I just gave you a chance, I could change my thinking and we could bury the hatchet once and for all.


I was so so wrong about that. I was stupid to think we could possibly be civil to one another, but I do have one request that I ask you fulfill in exchange for a satisfying silence from me: I write this letter to ask you to kindlly stop giving me a higher and higher number every time I visit you.

I won't come around often, and you can start to gradually slide back into a digit that doesn't make me hyperventilate when I do visit. Deal? Please?

Hoping,

Corrbette

Dear Corrbette:


Ow. Get off me. Why do you weigh so damned much?

Painfully,
Scale

Dear Scale:

You have no heart.

Weeping,
Corrbette

Dear Corrbette:

...

Scale

A Game I Play

Just to amuse myself, when Ella and Betty (the two female cats of the stripey variety) get on the bed after I've made it in the morning, I turn around to face them. I stand for a second, then throw my hands in the air...

...eerily similar to a way I might throw my hands in the air if I just...didn't care...

and say, "Alll the stripey kitties on the bed say, 'ho-ohh,'" and then watch them, expectantly.

After a moment, when all I get is this:

You can't quite make it out, but that is two stripey cats who are staring blankly at me.

I tell them that they suck at this game.

But...but...I Got Nothin'.

I'm defensive. And I make jokes to avoid that issue.

Don't you tell me you know that already. Your mom knows that already.

Damn.

I am realizing more and more how tightly I hold onto things. Um, the wrong things. And I'm trying to figure out ways to let them go. But, at the risk of sounding crazy corny (mmm...crazy corn), it's damn hard to let walls down you don't even know are there.

I surprised my therapist by crying in session. I surprised my fiance when I called him afterward. Hell, I surprised myself. Emotions aren't supposed to do that, are they? Come over you like some horrible surprise party where self actualization jumps from behind the couch and knocks you into the punchbowl?

Is weeping supposed to be like a lottery win where you get kicked in the face? Sudden, unexpected and leaving you with a swollen face?

Seriously, I know that normal people aren't Movie Pretty when they cry, but holy moly. I put frozen spoons on my eyes this morning to get the swelling down. Then I put on eyeliner to try and dress it up. The upside is not having crow's feet because you're swollen. The downside is you look like an Asian woman with a bee sting. Or I do. I don't know what you look like.

I'm pretty sure one isn't meant to be ambushed by emotions. Which means I cover up a lot, so I probably don't give them the attention they need. I make jokes. I give zingers. I constantly have a comment. I enjoy banter. Apparently, that doesn't communicate zippety dick about my feelings.

The catch is that, on some level, that really does make me happy. I'm laughing when I do that, fer cryeye. When I am on some kind of roll, whipping the comments out (probably at the expense of using the conversation partner as a setup man instead of someone to talk to), I am laughing. Is that...is that not joy?

Therapist questions, "But do you like yourself?"

Is it not good to sit with someone who understands this patter and go until we cannot breathe? Is it not joy if it isn't stillness?

Therapist questions, "Can you be still? And like yourself?"

Is it not joy if it's twitchy, mile a minute, caffeine fueled and brilliant? If I am making others laugh and letting that make me feel good and quick and smart...is that not joy?

Therapist questions, "And do you like yourself?"

Well, no. Not entirely. Because then I wouldn't have this awesome, self effacing wit.

Oh sure...sure NOW it sounds like a weak rationale. But you know, when I was doing it before, it was awesome. You know. When I was doing it...most of...my um...life.

Aw, hell.

Oh For Cryin Out Loud

...because that's what I did. Last night. Out of nowhere. For no good goddamned reason. We were watching tv, drinking Sunday night beer. Eating leftover stroganoff (mm) and generally enjoying ourselves. Then a wave of "You're Horrible, You Know" hit me.

Pasko comes back into the room, bewildered at the sight of my staring off into space with a look on my face usually reserved for...I dunno...remembering the dead. Worrying about the sick. Passing a kidney stone. Something important.

"You look sad. What happened?"

"I'm just wondering if I'm ever going to lose this weight. Actually ever consistently do something about it, instead of just fits and starts. The only thing I do consistently about it is obsess and complain. So i just..."

And then weeping. Open, flat out weeping.

Here's something good about being in my mid-thirties where this type of behavior is not, shall we say, novel: I know where this came from.

Here's something good about being in a long-term relationship: so does Pasko. His idea was different than mine, and we were both right.

My theory is the simple, sweep-it-all solution: I'm hormonal and PMSing enough to fuel an entire marathon of The View.

His theory is far more...well...observant: Every time I have a costume fitting, this happens.

He is correct. So am I, but his sounds less dismissive. Usually it's the man that brushes away all tears with PMS excuses. Way to go, Pasko.

Now, the first part of the costume fitting was great. Things were being built on me to correct and accentuate what I'm lacking and what I have, respectively. That's pretty easy. The second part involved putting on Wal-Mart jeans that were allegedly two different sizes...and yet they were both the same tight fit. Also, I was surrounded by teeeeny women while I stood there in black jeans that looked like tar on a sausage. Not so easy.

Sure, it took damn near 12 hours for it to hit me as hard as it did, but it hit all the same.

Clearly, I need some kind of break from that thinking. It's self destructive and never points me in a direction I need to be in. Also, it won't help me when I'm buying a dress for a wedding this weekend.

Maybe I just need to sit down with some Lifetime television as punishment to think about what I've done, and what I sound like.

(shudder)

Nah. I don't deserve Melissa Gilbert and Tiffany Amber Theisen's fake tears. I wasn't that out of control.

Maybe I just need to punch a bag at the gym and shut up.

Maybe I need to like myself more.

Maybe I need a pony.

Well, I certainly need a pony. I mean, if there's any key need on this list, it's the pony.

Right? What?

Hey...I remember this.

It's blogging! It's writing about things that other people may or may not read!

Honestly, I just found myself moved by other people's writing, so I jumped on board. I am riding the coattails of those more motivated than myself.

Not that I haven't been motivated to write, but lately it's taken the form of writing about superheroes and friendships in a superhero-y world. My good friend Sara Sevigny and I have written a play for the Factory Theater's next season - and it was accepted. So I am, all at once, thrilled and terrified. This manifests itself in furious rewrites and questioning everything we've written thus far. And it was accepted two weeks ago. It doesn't go up until Summer 2010. Perhaps we should calm down a bit...nah. We'll have a reading just to hear it out loud next week. Of course, we've already churned out another draft - just so we can hear better stuff.

Meanwhile, I'm involved in another project that is actually asking for - nay, demanding - creativity from me on levels I'm unfamiliar with. I'm super crazy excited about it. I'll be singing Jon Langford tunes. Lots of them. I'll be wielding fans of some sort to let people know that I am A. a tumbleweed and B. on fire. In my last rehearsal, I was handed two makeshift fans on sticks and told to go play with them for a while. In the empty space I had as my own, I found the ceilings too low. I was then lead into an ENORMOUS EMPTY AUDITORIUM. And, just for kicks, given a big mirror so I could see what I was doing.

"Come on up when you're done."

Uh. Ok.

There was a time when I was small that my parents were busy and something had to be done with me. Perhaps it was my mom checking out my preschool, perhaps it was the two seconds when we went to temple - I'm not sure. I just remember the feeling of being in a wide open space with carpeting to cushion myself and whatever ridiculousness I was going to try. Chances were, there was some other child whose parents couldn't get a sitter, and we made friends for an hour. Did somersaults. Raced. Spun around. Did whatever we wanted because this space was huge and not home.

That's what that rehearsal felt like. I wanted to be able to do so much more than I could - no handed cartwheels (I'll settle for one-handed, which I am determined to learn) or no-handed rolls. Something awesome and beautiful so I could manipulate these fans in a way that exceeded expectations. Though...truly...there were no expectations. I went upstairs, sweaty and spent, watched what the others had been working on and then showed them a few things I figured out. That was rehearsal.

Next week, we sing.

Meanwhile, I'm writing.

During all of this, I'm going home to the man I love. We're coming home to our home together - we haven't shared a home in three years. It feels so good to be back, I get very happily teary and emotional just thinking about what it took to get here.

Someone in my office told me I had been beaming lately. She's right.

I have eight million arms.

I wonder, at times, if I could do so much more in one area if I wasn't doing eleventy things at once.

And then I remember that I'm hardwired to do aforementioned eleventy things at once. I will, therefore, never know.

American Notes is going beautifully. The cast and crew are amazingly kickass, and I hope that my attempts at "telling them where to stand and walk to" are paying off for others as much as I feel they are.

Also, in case I haven't already posted this, I'll do it again. I'm in love with this trailer, along with every piece of marketing for this show. Visually stunning and slightly snarky. The way I love it.


I am realizing, however, that my ability to do eleventy things at once makes for craptacular blog writing. Huh. That's unfortunate.

Sporatic

Seems to be the word to best describe my blogging. Or writing in general, for that matter.

I got my first paid writer's gig for something I wrote years ago that was meant for me. I performed it in a two woman show...so I performed it as myself...never intending for it to go anywhere else. Now it's a short film located here. This is a film company that two amazing friends of mine started in New York. Yep. They moved to New York and started a film company. Coast stereotypes be damned, they're doing it their way.

A short while later, a friend called me in last minute for a voiceover for a training video. Paid me to portray finger puppet renditions of an operator and caller. Good stuff.

So as I struggle to be seen, to mail in, to get called in, to have anyone notice me and somehow spoonfeed me the elusive sense of Chicago Actor Legitimacy I have not fed myself in a while...I get paid for my work from my friends.

I'm not complaining. Just...noticing. Huh.