I’m taking you with me today. Out into the streets and rehearsal and friend meets and pub hang time.
…Its a sunny fall day in the Metropolis. I’m currently sitting in the UW district, drinking hot vanilla bubble tea (minus the bubbles), waiting for “K” and “A” to meet up. They just finished a 5k for Charity. I just finished brushing my teeth and putting a hat over my gross unshowered hair. Clearly, they are better people than me. This has never been disputed.
…Also, they are more hip and adventurous.
…For instance, I would never suggest consuming Bubble Tea on purpose. Usually, when shit gets gelatinous and gooey at the bottom of a fucking glass, you don’t drink whatever’s in there, cuz its obviously gone bad. But “K” and “A” are like, “Fuck that noise, ya’ll! This shit is delicious! I love chewing what I drink!” (They don’t really talk that way, P.S…but in my head, when I “write” them, they do.)
…Ooo! Bonus! “J” and Mr. Cuteness are enroute as well, I hear!
***Later***
We sit, (they chewing, me drinking), our teas as Mr. Cuteness is passed hand-to-hand. We, all commenting on how big he’s getting, and how red, the red hair has become, now the peach fuzzes have disappeared. He gnaws on me with his sharp new baby teeth, and I keep interrupting the line of conversation to stop and smell him constantly.
…His smell is like nothing else more delicious on earth.
Every time we all get together, it gobsmacks me that for months across this time last year, we were all working on a show together, and he was merely a robust belly bump we all petted and talked to and admired daily. We know this boy more intimately than legit blood family babies. We are his Aunties, and dote and pinch and play and love on him (and Mama), by turn, to ridiculous levels of necessity. Because we cannot help ourselves.
…It’s good to know that kind of pure, total, instinctual love and devotion can exist, in old maidenish, never-want-to-have-children-of-my-own-in-a-million-years, people like me.
…I missed these guys. We gotta figure out our rehearsal schedules to fit in meets between. I only live one block from their theatre, so we should figure something out, I hope. Life gets so busy and complicated, and suddenly it’s two or three months since you’ve seen people that pass your door every day. We need to fix that somehow, I think.
***Later***
A walk. Too good out there to pass it up. I’m already dressed, (and prob’ly smell), so to hell with it! Grab the phone, cue up Pandora and get out it in. Breathe deep. Snuggle into the fleece, zip-up, launch out, crunch leaves and those strange pokey nut thing seeds that go three layers deep and roll all over the pavement, screwing with the joggers who try to step between them. Read the new poem post at that one house. Then back home to shower and motor to rehearsal for final Act 5 review (in which I do not figure largely, so will be all the more able to observe and report back to the yous.)
***Later***
Sun has gone way suddenly, and a spit shower starts. I turn around and speed up back towards home. Two fellas building a trellis stop their band saws and “Hullo” me with matchin’ grins. Brothers, very obviously. I nod back, marching and thumb typing on, wiping the screen by turn, as the smell of wet sawdust follows me on the wind’s breeze.
…Raining harder now. Away goes the phone, as I tug my knit hat down further and push on.
***Later***
Change of rehearsal schedule due to flu-deaths already peppering the cast. We are all in socks and slippers (because the stage floor is being diagrammed for an intricate painting process that we keep fucking up with our shoes.) “M” is in Snookie slippers, marching around being indignant in great swarthes of Shakespearean language, with cartoon feet. My god, I love her so much right now.
…In the lobby, eating cake and BSing on-call, perpetually. Plans have been made for La Palma eats after. And I’m totally ignoring them all in the corner to write this, but they keep wandering over, by turn, to see what I’m doing. Talkin’ shit, you guys. Talkin’ shit. About YOU. Oh the power I wield.
…Off to go play…
***Later***
Line runs to infinity. We are absolutely puking meter in brilliance right now…changing accents by turn, cuz we can. Midwestern, Bronx, Boston, variety of English, and cartoon voices. If theater shows had outtake reels, they would be twelve times longer than the legit show. And funnier. And grosser. And sexually explicit. And politically incorrect. Which is why we do this shit to begin with. We are encouraged to do things at our job that other people get sued and fired for, at theirs. We may live off condiments and stale popcorn left over in concessions from last weekend’s show, but we have a good time, damn it!
***Later***
Pub time with cast-ies, after fittings. We all order different shit and eat off each other’s plates. The Fella (a particular Ninja check-paying master) grabs my dinner and drinks off the list before I even have time to take my card out. We set a gamer/pizza/movie night together with “M” for next Saturday, (post optional add-on rehearsal), and talk shop the rest of the night.
…By 10:30, I am home, contemplating PJ’s and face-washing. Maybe some book reading. Or I’ll just catch up on my subscription posts. Either way, it’s time for me to get outta these pants, and free-bird from m’bra…so, “Goodnight, say I to the yous.”
…Tomorrow is only a couple hours away, and it’s gonna take all I got, to pretend it ain’t.
Gawd, how I hate Mondays…
~D
