its almost like being awake.

so i can't sleep tonight. i've tried everything. its just not in the cards. but its not like i'm functioning and fully awake, bright eyed and bushy tailed. i'm just not asleep. which is even more rage-enducing. at least if i was unable to sleep because i was doing some great thinking or reorganizing my whole wardrobe i'd feel productive. but i'm just not asleep.
the best way i can describe this type of awake is that it is sort of like having a muscle spasm in my brain. i lay here waiting for sleep to come and just as it arrives =zz= my brain reactivates with nothing special to think about or remind me to do. it just won't shut down for the night.
so now i have propped myself up and decided its time to make this unrest productive by thinking and blogging about the following:
so, lately i feel i've been standing on the presupice of something great. i'm not sure what it is but i'm preparing myself. things are just lining up in an oddly neat manner and it seems they must be pointing toward something.
change of topic. this will be left vague, but i have a feeling two of my friends will be able to read this cryptic type and understand as if they were in my head thinking this for themselves. it is no secret that i am a person who does not hide or mask my feelings or emotions. this can be good and bad. but one thing i learned during my parents divorce was that it does no one any goood to lie or or disguise truth. and that is a direct comment on having strong and open lines of communication in every relationship you value - family, partner, friend, co-worker. no matter. i also learned that its not a good thing to eat doritos and sit on the couch while my parents were divorcing, but those 75 pounds will be discussed another time. ok- so, sometimes things happen in life that you know will lead to inexplicable amounts of happiness in the future. you may not know the date said happiness will begin or even a ball park estimate, but you know it will be. i've got that right now. and that constant knowledge of forthcoming happiness is awesome. however it comes at the price of knowing there will be considerable challenge and pain to achieve the happiness; as with all good things there is a price to pay. at present, there is a hint of that pain sort of constantly nagging at me, letting me know its gonna happen. it's like a bad joint. it hurts, you get used to living with that pain at all times so much so you almost don't notice it anymore but at least once a day you feel it full out and it steals your breath. thats where i'm at right now. even though i haven't really met even one big painful obstacle yet, i can feel it a little bit all the time. but the pain is sort of good. it makes me know i'm feeling - i can feel it. which is good because if you can feel the pain then you can feel all the good as well. and the best part is at least once a day i get a little shot of the delight that opposes the pain. and that little taste is enough to make the pain worth dealing with. so i've come to love the pain. it's a reminder of the delight that relieves it.
and the best part is i know - i don't know how i know, but i know- that the delight will eventually be the norm. i have total faith in this and it makes everyday a little better.
so with this realization i have developed a little saying to keep the inspiration up: "every reward starts with a challenge. meet your challenge eye to eye. make your challenge your friend. after all, your challenge holds the key to your reward so it can't be all bad."

deal.

ok. so i'm bad at doing this regularly. deal. new stuff since last i left you. my birthday weekend in february got snowed out. so it was rescheduled two weeks later to the end of february. fail. i hate snow ... in fact winter entirely except i like layering clothes. other than that it stinks. but thanks to those who came out to celebrate and donned wild wild west accessories in public to help me have fun.
march was what march always is - dullsville. not much to mention. march is my least favorite month of the year. it's not spring, but it seems like winter should be over. the best part about march was that katharyn made a lot of great appearances over spring break.
april was pretty good. my mom, who can't drive, bought herself a brand new car. sort of odd. but whatever. after lots of invitations, i finally got to go see my friend lauren's (not so new anymore) apartment. fun.
have had lots of laughs with my bestie aubre over the past few weeks. they are usually inappropriate or childish and we couldn't love that anymore. most recently our chuckles have come from inaccurate celebrity look-a-like creators on line (me, christina applegate/ aubs, joan cusack!!!!) and the entire population of a hippie-fest earth day (on the wrong day) flea market / street fair - most notably the one-africa singer whose accent kept mutating to one from different lands. priceless.
if your not following brothers and sisters and glee we can't be friends. stop reading blog immediately and go catch up on-line.
done for now.

hello old friend, it's me, blog.

ok, let's not beat around the bush. i've been very neglectful of my blog. it's not that i don't love you blog. but life has been really busy. but i will admit, four months is too long. so here's the long and the short of it. september was september. october was nice. halloween crept up on me and i had no time to build the la carlotta costume i wanted so i pulled together a bunch of costume pieces i had to make this fantastic willy wonka. but at the last minute it was unseasonably hot and rainy. so i grabbed some fabric i had and whipped up a pretty stellar caesar costume 20 minutes before leaving. casey and i had a terrific time and she got so crunk she couldn't wear her shoes so i lent her mine and i went barefoot. she then ripped a full mum out of a window box in center city and carried it with her to the diner we went to so she could 'sober up.' she completes me. november was hectic. i was a cast addition to the christmas show at the broadway theatre. while i hate holiday shows, they are so generous with tthe use of their space to the miss liberty pageant, i really couldn't say no when asked. and despite my initial trepidation, i had a blast and met some wonderful new friends. most memorable experiance was the blizzard of 2009 that postponed one performance and sufficiently stranded me in laurie's attic in mannyunk with some delightful chums. it was like we were the franks hiding from the germans but with pizza and internet access. also, i finally saw all of zoolander that weekend and fancy myself something of a 'blue steel' officionado now. don't hate.
five minutes into christmas show rehearsal i found out i was cast in singin' in the rain at the broadway and would be reprising my role of 'production tenor' from 2002 at three little bakers. psyched. i love that role. bad news, not enough guys in the cast for me to just cameo so i have to tap dance. now for those of you who don't know, i'm not really a tap dancer. so doing it in front of 1100 hundred paying costumers sort of gives me a panic attack. but ya know what? i'm writing this after my third performance of the show and i'm really holding my own. in fact, next weekend i'm being moved to the front of the formation by the choreographer! sort of proud of overcoming that fear.
i have also met some really awesome people doing this show and am also insanely happy and feel very blessed to be working with my friend ted in the same cast for the first time and am really pleased that this affords us the opportunity to become closer friends. as well as finally meeting/ falling in friendship love with his lovely girlfriend samantha (she's our lina lamont and is fantastic). also big ups to ted for learning a boatload of tap-ography to play don, because he was in the same tap boat as me, but is totally looking like a lifelong tapper.
At the same time as the christmas show and rehearsing singin', it was time for my most favorite event of the year - the miss liberty pageant. miss liberty was held january 3 and it was pretty much a flawless evening and i received many compliments, which is awesome. but even better, my new miss liberty is katharyn nicolle. k-dizzle was miss new jersey's outstanding teen in 2008. she is super intellegent, overly talented (pointe ballerina), drop dead gorgeous, and just an all around nice girl ... and she drives a convertible so having her as my girl is a match made in heaven. i can't wait to go to miss new jersey with her this june. look out ashley shaffer, we're coming after your job!!!! no worries though ashshaf, cos you'll have had to pass it on to katie hope by then cos you'll have won miss america by then ... hopefully!
ok. this is really long, but now your up to speed. i'll try to be better at this now.

things that go poop in the night

let's just get this out of the way. the word 'blog' since its inception has reminded me of a slang term for feces (ie: dung, poop, crap, terd...blog). that being said, i have always referred to writing a blog post in b.m. terms. for example when i see something that is so priceless i need to document it here (or on my old blog, may she rest in peace) i would say something like "man, i gotta take a wicked blog." or "do you smell that? the blog just hit the fan." likewise when i haven't had anything to write about i refer to it as being 'blogstapated.'
ok, i'm glad we covered that. moving on:
last night at about 3:40 am, as i was finally about to drift off into sleep, my dog nudges me indicating she needs to go outside and relieve herself. so i walk her downstairs and let her out in the backyard. something you should know about zoe, my dog, is that she has severe seperation anxiety and does not like to leave my side for a second (as i type she's curled up on the floor, head resting on my foot looking up at me). so usually she runs out, does her business, and runs right back inside and plants herself next to me, if not on me in some fashion. she's a yorkie, so thats easily done.
but last night she was outside for nearly five minutes, which is out of character. something was afoot. so i opened the door and called out her name and made the kissey noise which always sets her running. nothing. i call her name again and she comes slowly trudging back with her head hung low. she looks up at me quickly and then trots into the house and plants herself under the kitchen table. this is not good. is she hurt? was she viciously attacked by some squirrel or worse? i try to get her out from under the table but she bolts into her little doghouse/bed. i reach in and lift her out expecting to find her mauled by some creature of the night.
no, folks. the only thing that attacked her was the beer shits. her entire hind quarters was embedded in her own mess. poor thing. but at least she made it outside because, while this was horrible, i'm sure whatever made it to the ground was infinately worse and i'm happy i wasn't cleaning that off the floor(miraculously and thankfully she managed not to track any of this through the house). i was forced to bathe the dog at nearly 4 am, much to my chagrin.
so why did i write about this? because the whole time from when she came back in the house through bathing her, the look on her face was so adorable and sad. she seemed to say "i never meant for this to happen" and it reminded me of the commercials where the dogs are holding signs in their mouths explaing how they feel, what they think, or answering a question they were just asked. and communicating dogs get me every time.

offending the very delicacy of my nature

last week while driving through the parking lot of a shopping center that houses a walmart, the champagne of discount stores, my father said something to me that would become one of my favorite quotes of...well, ever. "they should really charge an entrance fee for the show." spot on old sport.

in response to making this my facebook status for a cybergiggle, former miss liberty and mother to quite possibly the worlds most adorable baby, sarah cohn, alerted me to a wonderful website: http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/ . not only are they not charging to see this spectacle live and in the toothless-mullety-beardedlady-flesh, but now they are giving this shit away for free on the internet. and i, for one, couldn't be more pleased.

so, what do you say? ladies, take off your bras. men, put on your dirtiest wife beater. lower your standards and your tax bracket, and check out this website. i'm sure you'll be impressed. or nausiated. either way, it's worth a look.

too soon?

randomly in passing the other day, my mother mentioned to me that in the event of her death, the house is left to me and her life insurance policy will cover the remainder of the mortgage and leave a sizeable sum to be divided evenly between my two sisters and me.


i immediately started renovations in my head. and that's probably the wrong reaction to have.


however, i do want this bed:


http://www.nateberkus.com/portfolio.php?id=170


i mean, you know... when the time comes.

itch in the night

so, recently i've been plagued by something sort of indescribable. but i'll try. as i lie in bed waiting for the sweet numbness of slumber to carry me off to a date with mr. sandman, i have started feeling these weird sensations on my feet. they are what i refer to as tickle-itches. these are not to be confused with the 'inside itch' that my chum aubre has tried to explain to no avail, rather, to heavy mocking. the tickle itch feels like a little tickle on the surface of the skin. that no amount of scratching will end. it's torturous and has kept me awake, rubbing my feet with a pumice stone til they are near bleeding then slathering them in cocoa butter, til about 5 am every night for the past week or so. on a more positive note, the skin on my feet hasn't ever been so supple!

what does one do to pass the impassable time in these twilight hours, one may ask. well, i've taken to watching old seasons of 'will & grace' on dvd. it's hard to belive it's been nearly eleven years since these characters first made their way into the world of pop culture (11th anniversary, Sept 21, 2009). equally hard to believe is that they've only been off the air for just over three years (series finale aired spring of 2006). or that of the 187 episodes aired, shelley morrison only appeared in 68 as karen walker's maid rosario. she just always seemed so present, now thats acting!

anyway, in revisiting these characters, i found several truths that i never befor realized. first, whom ever was doing debra messing's make-up should be drug out into the street and shot. now i know it was part of the schtick for her hair to be wacky and her clothes to be just off the mark so karen could have endless comments about her flawed fashion and grooming. but why did she look like a drag queen for most of seasons one and two? second, as we all can agree, the life blood of this show was neither will, nor grace. but instead, the supporting characters jack and karen and their wacky hijinx. that being said, the first time around, karen seemed so broad and farcical. but upon further exposure, it is my opinion that she was the most developed and multi-faceted character on the show. her backstory and character nuances were the truest and most influencial to the final product of the character. and this was not a result of the writing, but of the acting chops of miss megan mullally. next, i find that, say what you will about the character of jack, but the slapstick style of acting employeed by sean hayes is nothing short of genious and it is an inherant skill, not something that can be learned.

now the heart-ache. what the will? why was will such a debbie downer all the time? it wasn't in the writing. i have analized many of the scenes and the script work does not demand that will be negative and condescending all the time. but the choices that actor eric mc cormac made really make will unloveable, and worse, unrelatable. in fact the times when will is being tender with grace, when he should be most loveable are when i stomach him the least because he can never allow her to be his equal. he always has to be holier-than-thou with grace. the only times i have found will to be enjoyable is when karen pulls him through a scene and doesn't allow him to condescend to her. i also noticed when doing a google image search of each actor while preparing for this blog, that this seems to be a true-life character flaw in eric mc cormac. every picture is unnatural and posed, even candids. and you can read through the lens that he thinks he is alot more attractive than he actually is.

that aside, the writing for this show was so good that it took me 11 years to realize eric's acting is at the level of a strong community theatre and not nearly as polished or natural as his three ensemble-mates. also, i crave guest appearances by debbie reynolds as grace's mother, bobbi adler, the flawless "jewess from schenectedy." debra and debbie's ability to mirror and oppose eachother at the same time while portraying the journey grace is taking to 'become' her mother is fascinating,seemingly effortless, and uproarious!

all-in-all "Oh. My. G-...!"