I'm engaged in a battle of wills with a chocolate bar.

I'm trying to eat healthier, y'all. Trying to prevent the diabeetus, drop a few pounds, that kind of thing. And I work in an environment where there is always some kind of treat/snack out for communal consumption. Today's treat: fun-sized Coffee Crisp chocolate bars. This of course follows yesterday's mental statement "I'm going to make it one week without eating crap at work!" Followed hard upon by another mental statement: "I will try to make it 3 days without eating crap at work." Followed by today's rebuttal from the bowl of chocolate bars: "Come ON! We're fun-sized! FUN-SIZED!" Clearly I'm a living embodiment of a Cathy cartoon. I'm also out of my healthy snacks. But I only have to be here for 2 more hours, then heading to the gym, and even though my co-worker has been on a mail run for about four times as long as usual and no one would even see me eat the chocolate bar, I am not going to break. Oh, my play? How's that going? Well, as you can see, I've already written a couple of paragraphs on my blog so far. So I've written something. And I have the script open on my desktop, so it's, you know, open and ready to receive my creative musings and whimsies. The secret is really in getting the writing to coincide with the open document. It's tricky like that.

Customer service would be great if it weren't for all the customers...

That pretty much sums it up. I'm feeling a bit burnt out by the entitlement, the yelling, the unreasonableness, the fact that people are going this mental over TICKETS. For concerts! It's not like I purposely destroyed your last vial of insulin, people! I also woke up this morning to a blanket of snow. For reals. It's really being a bit of an ugh day. When it seemed like the weather might actually be appropriate for the season, I was thinking about trying my hand at container gardening. For vegetables. Historically, I've never been someone who was into gardening. The bugs, the sun, the outdoorsiness of it... these are not things I am great with. But I do love eating stuff fresh from the garden. I remember my grandparents' garden (my grandfather was a farmer in the old country, but his family had to sell the land due to the dastardly acts of a distant cousin named Hannibal--I know, right?) was always amazing. My mom gardened for a while as well, until she realized that the railway ties she'd been using for her raised bed gardens were probably surreptitiously poisoning us. So I'm thinking that I'll try a couple of plants--just basics. I'm thinking cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and maybe some lettuce. Oh, and perhaps some hot peppers, just because. But that's it. I'm sure I can handle 4 pots of plants, right? I do have a history of getting overly ambitious with projects like this. Today: I am going to write something on my play, dammit. I hate when people complain that writing is HARRRRRDDDD and consider that their writing time. But writing is HARRRRRRDDDDD, y'all! I am also going to brave the snow/rain/sleet/plague of frogs to see a play tonight. Hopefully that will be the last time I have to wear my winter boots this year!

Tuesday

So I'm gradually chipping away at that 3-month plan I keep vaguely mentioning. I think I've found a fantastic new monologue that is slightly terrifying to start approaching... it's both Canadian and contemporary, which kills two birds with one stone for many audition requirements. And I'm narrowing it down in new Shakespeare land. Now I need to find a song. I have some ideas. But. My voice teacher, who's one of those fantastic songbirds who was just always encouraged to sing, always enjoyed singing, and is just plain megatalented asked me "why do you think singing is so nervewracking to so many people". And I said "Because if I'm getting up there and singing for someone, I'm implying that I think I'm good." I suppose it's the same for anything you agree to get up and do in front of people--from a job interview to a whistling contest to being an auctioneer.... you are in some way saying "Yeah, I can do this" just from the sheer act of saying "Let me show you this". It's audition season. I've pledged to submit to as many things as I can and see who will take me. I'm also going to start writing a play. I've decided to startle myself into doing it. Essentially, when I was at the Big Important Writing Workshop in the Mountains a couple of months ago, I was given an assignment to have a first draft done by May 15. At which point I am to email the Big Important Writer and let him know whether or not I did it. This has been hanging over my head since the beginning of March, and while I've been noodling about with it, I haven't really sat down to tackle it in a major way. But I've resolved. I've come up with a kooky idea. And I will be bold and possible bad. I will potentially suck at writing this. This could be a HUGE MESS, folks. But I have to start writing it this week. Coincidentally, my boss, who sits in a position directly behind me where she can see my screen, is going on a 2-week vacation tomorrow. Could it be the universe giving me the green light?

Perhaps I should have been a plumber...

For a variety of reasons, not the least of which is our success with DIY fixing the toilet last weekend. Plus, I think that plumbers make crazy amounts of money! And some of them start ghost hunting services in their free time! AND our shower is now broken. I have a feeling that the expiration date on our house may be fast approaching--everything seems to be falling apart. Take last night, when I went to take a shower, pulled up the little knob, and it wouldn't pull. And wouldn't pull. And I asked my husband to give it a try, and the little knob pulled off right in his hand. Oops. Internet research tells us that this may be a cheap, relatively easy fix, but we have to take the faucet off. And since we have one of those weird hand-held shower things, I'm not sure if we have to replace the whole thing, or can just do parts, and do they still have parts from eleventy-billion years ago when the house was built? I think we may need to call an expert in on this one. A professional, expensive expert. So there's that. Then this morning I had a dentist appointment, got to work late, then got in shit from a client for something they think is my mistake, but the error was really in their assumption. Well, and possibly my mistake, a little. I did things the normal way, not realizing that for several years said client has been a special snowflake and has come to consider that the norm. In any case, it will be fixed, but it hasn't been a great start to my day. I think I have a case of the Mondays, amirite people? How has your week started off?

Everything's coming up Milhouse!

Well, at least in the home appliance department--I've just found out that we are getting a BRAND NEW washer this Saturday! Our old washer died a gruesome death about a month ago, after J tried to wash an ill-advisedly large load. This means that we will finally be able to have CLEAN CLOTHES again (apologies to my ancestors, but my hand-washing skills are decidedly not up to par), rather than wandering the earth looking for quarters for the laundromat, or kindly friends who have in-suite laundry themselves.

Of course, the price of clean clothes means that we will have to clean the basement before the blessed machine's arrival, or suffer the judgement of the delivery men. Also the judgement of our landlady's son, which we will never stop hearing about. It's quite amazing that an area of the house we never use can become so hoard-y so quickly. It's not quite so fun to clean, as I am always hypervigilant to the possibility of spiders/other random creepy crawlies.

Winter is here again?

That is one of the downsides of living in ye olde prairies--apart from the urge to vote even more conservatively when people think the government needs changing, there is the changeable weather. While I read on facebook that my friends across the country are enjoying unseasonably warm weather, I often come home and think "the snow has FINALLY melted" and wake up the next morning to find my lawn has been blanketed anew. No snow in the forecast today, but it's just above the freezing mark. I don't know how to dress in the morning. It's tragic, I know. Since I haven't had the chance or the finance to hit up Valoo Village for some spring/summer work clothes that fit, it's probably just as well that the cooler weather hangs out a little longer.

Some updates: J's mom is extremely ill, and he will likely be reducing his work hours to spend more time with his family, as the situation is... not good. This means that I'll more than likely need to take up the financial slack, as we're on quite a tight budget already. My contract gig says they'll be coming through with a new offer/contract sometime today, but of course that's no guarantee of what kind of work will be available, or how much. I've kind of slacked off on the shitty part-time job search, but I may have to step up my efforts, depending on what my new contract looks like. We are gradually chipping away at our debt, and I would surely like to keep at it.

Waiting to read a script for the show I'm doing this summer--I've worked with the playwright before, so it should be good fun, and a sweet little paycheck in September.

My efforts to include other creative work besides writing/singing/acting in my life include making a pile of new recipes this week. Yes, it's Jamaican Week at our house, which goes so nicely with the weather. I've also returned to my poor half-finished sock I started many months ago--I am boring and prefer to make plain socks, but I decided to branch out into a more challenging pattern. I can't say I'm a fan. I like to watch tv while I knit, without the distraction of remembering how many repeats I've done, or if this is the double increase or does this look wonky because I did the pattern for round 4 when I should have done round 7?

I know, there's just no satisfying me.

I can't stand the rain...

Mostly because our basement is in grave danger of flooding--there is a leak in our old house, and every spring we are faced with a depressing couple of days of shop-vac-ing out water for hours at a time.

In other watery news, we are going to attempt to fix our toilet today. Nothing like a little diy plumbing to start off the weekend! I am confident in our combined mechanical abilities, as well as the helping powers of the internet. I can't imagine how people must have screwed up their home repairs without the internet. Of course, the internet basically says it's dead easy to do this kind of stuff yourself, so perhaps it has resulted in more disasters overall.

In exciting news, I just got asked to do a show this summer! And as much as I am trying NOT to focus on outside validation, I must confess, it is awfully nice to be validated. It sounds like a funny script, and the folks involved are good eggs all around. This is a classic example of how you say one thing ("No one is EVER going to call me for anything!") and the universe thwarts you two days later by doing just that.

Thanks, universe!

Small bits of progress

I am still feeling like le poop, but am working to keep on keeping on. I've started trying to figure out some new monologues, Shakespeare being my current challenge. It seems like the majority of Shakespeare's women are either 18 or 60, which is a bit problematic for those of us in between. And, of course, you want to avoid the ones that get done a lot, or the ones from the play that has recently been done by the theatre in question. I do think that if you truly kick ass at a piece, you shouldn't worry about it being overdone, but it's nice to have something a little more rare, all the same.

I'm leaning toward some of the goodies in Henry VI, Part 3, which I have never read. And I should probably read parts 1 and 2 as well. I am a little overwhelmed by the complexity of the history, but I guess I'll just have to get over that.

Last night I actually did some mending. Even though we're horribly poor at the moment, there's just no reason for us to look like hobos (or hobettes, or whatever the female version of a hobo might be). Just a Werner Herzog documentary on Netflix, tacos, and mending. Ah, this frugal life.

I've also started applying for that second job I've so been looking forward to. On one hand, it will be so great to have a little money left over at the end of the month. On the other hand, I'm feeling a bit ugh about the prospect of leaving my current job at the end of the day to go pour coffee or check out groceries or whatever I end up doing.

I still have that play to write. And baking to do. And all the other ands on my list of stuff to do in the next three months.

But my taxes are done! Praise be to the gods for House Hunters International marathons for giving me the boost to get all those receipts sorted. Every year, I vow to change my receipt-storing habits, and every year I find myself sorting through various pieces of paper.

And how is your Wednesday?

I'm having a real "Hulk Smash" kind of day...

Which has improved by the news that I have won a free bottle of salad dressing from Safeway! Apparently, that's the reward I get for finally dumping the accumulated receipts from my wallet. For this year, mind you. I have been putting off dealing with last year's receipts, which may or may not be in a huge pile in my office.

My day job is turning into quite a toxic environment, which is not news, but sometimes it is either more toxic or my tolerance is lower, or both. I have four hours left today, not that I'm counting.

I am off to a bit of a slow start with the 3 month plan, but I am not giving up! I am currently looking for a new Shakespeare monologue, as well as new contemporary monologues. And a couple of good songs to add to my book. This month's extracurricular creative activity is "Bake Something". I have my eye on the mustache cookie cutters I got for Christmas--I think some chocolate roll-out mustaches may be in my future soon.

In mentally-interesting news, I have already switched medications once, and the new one is better but gives me crazy, intense, epic dreams. Like, multi-layered, multi-part dreams that seem to span years in dreamtime and leave me feeling a bit exhausted when I wake up. Also, one of the side effects is weight gain--not from metabolism, but from the appetite increase... which I am starting to feel the effects of today.

In writing news, a fellow from Germany requested to read one of my scripts this weekend. I'm preparing to be rejected on the continent as well as in the colonies.

And in achievement news, I can now do 30 girlie pushups!

How is your day going?