8 days till #Hallowmeme!

Things I’ve accomplished today:

• Had my first formal voice lesson in 30 years, and already determined some bad habits I can start working on unlearning
• Went to Target and bought only what was on my list
• Did my first leg workout since I started running last spring ... and freaking KILLED my legs without sacrificing proper form
• Accepted a very romantic marriage proposal from one of my 934 freakishly hunky gym crushes as all the rest of the guys in the gym struggled to mask their jealousy through forced smiles and wan applause*
• Attended a Full Monty line bash where I remembered more of my lines than I’d expected
• Sat down and actually played the piano for the first time in months as an overture (for lack of a less obvious metaphor) to my New Year’s resolution to practice with specific regularity
• Made it to my 11th day without having Diet Coke
• Wrote a blog post that doesn’t use the word “boobies”
• Oops
• Didn’t kill anyone intentionally
• Did some laundry without expecting a gold star on my chores chart
• Boobies
• Oops again

* This one is a total fucking lie

Ugly rehearsal ties can mean only one thing: WE'RE GONNA STRIP ALL OUR CLOTHES OFF!

Oops. I mean we had a lovely Full Monty rehearsal tonight. We worked on all the hard numbers, and I think we’re all now full of confidence and happenis.

3 days until #Hallowmeme!

(I just realized my countdown is somehow off by a day. THANKS, OBAMA. But that just means I guess I’ll have to post a BONUS MEME on the 31st.)

Yawn

When you accidentally took your night bipolar meds—which include the sedating Clozapine—instead of your morning ones plus you didn’t rehydrate nearly enough after your morning run so you’re profoundly sleepy and your entire body feels like an immolated corpse and you need all the stimulation and moisture you can get before work:

And on all days to screw up my meds, I had my three-month psychiatrist appointment this morning. I’m apparently still normal enough to be allowed toroam among the unsuspecting citizenry, but I’ve been having near-blackouts multiple times a day for months and my blood pressure is on the alarmingly low side of normal, so now I have another compelling reason—the other one being I’m 50 and need to be responsible and get a colonoscopy—to visit my GP.

I did NOT just talk about my colon on my blog. Did I?

Anyway, I’ll call to schedule an (yawn) appointment with my (yawn) GP just as (yawn) soon as I rehydrate my (yawn) cells and wake the hell (yawn) up.

Yawn. Colon.

What I learned this morning:

1. I think I’ll be able to run tomorrow’s 8K.

2. There’s a chance I may be an idiot for doing it.
3. Which would completely sabotage all my summer and fall running goals.
4. Or not.
5. My physical therapist gave me the go-ahead to run tomorrow, but only because she trusts me to pull my head out of my ass and stop running at the first sign of pain.
6. Those weren’t her exact words.
7. But she’s right.
8. These two yahoos are saints for joining me this morning in what I warned them might end up being just a lovely sunrise walk.
9. Which it pretty much was.
10. I estimate we ran a mile and walked a mile and a half in aggregate.
11. My stupid-damn-fuck-you-I-hate-you-I-hate-you-I-hate-you-not-fair-why-why-why-injured hip is definitely sore right now.
12. But in an I’m-just-being-overly-cautious sensitive way and not an I’ve-reactivated-my-injury-and-completely-sabotaged-all-my-summer-and-fall-running-goals way.
13. I think.
14. But I just said “I think” on list number 13, which probably negates it and I might as well set up a ladder in a black-cat breeding mill and walk under it.
15. Or I just said that to pad this list so it reaches 25.
16. Game ON!
17. We didn’t plan to be so collectively patriotic in our running attire this morning.
18. Clearly Rob and I are actory drama queens because we’re not afraid to be weird in our selfies.
19. Clearly Scott is a master of self-restraint and decorum because he always looks normal and respectable in our selfies.
20. Or he’s just a fun-selfie sabotager.
21. You’d think that given the consistency in his boring, normal smiles over the last two months that Facebook would always automatically recognize him when I post our selfies.
22. But you’d be wrong.
23. But we still embrace him as one of our own.
24. C’mon, 25! You can do it!
25. BOOYAH!
26. Oops.

Doing lines and Diet Coke

Wait. That might have come out wrong ...

Well, shit

When you get home from an amazingly awesome vacation and you set down your painstakingly-filled-by-your-mother container of bipolar meds divided into an entire week of morning and evening handfuls of pills and it slips and lands face-down on the carpet and pops open and basically her worst nightmare explodes right before your eyes ...

What are my favorite things, everyone? Let's all say them together now:

1. Newsies
2. "Shut Up and Dance with Me"
3. The cute guys in Newsies
4. The cute guys in Newsies who can tap
5. The cute guys in Newsies who tap while the other cute guys in Newsies sing "Shut Up and Dance with Me"
6. Lists
7. The tapper in the brown shirt
8. The singer in the white shirt
9. Marriage proposals from any of the tappers and singers in Newsies
10. Making a list that stops at an even 10
11. Oops

When you definitely remember putting your lunch on the roof of your car before you opened your door

and you KIND OF remember actually putting it IN your car when you got in and I think we all know where I’m going with this.

I’ve had a couple am/pm mixups in the fistfuls of bipolar meds I choke down twice a day

Mom has now ever-so-subtly tried to fix my absent-mindedness.

Well, crap

I've ordered a good $500 worth of jeans in various tasteful and age-appropriate colors from Amazon over the past few months, and I finally sat down tonight to figure out how to return the ones that are too small. Which is pretty much all of them. Even though I ordered the size I always wear. But I just discovered to my procrastinated dismay that you can't return stuff to Amazon after 30 days. And you ESPECIALLY can't return stuff to Amazon with a cat in the box.

So I am now the proud owner of about 10 pair of 36 (cough! cough!) x 34 slim-fit jeans in tasteful shades of khakis and blues and greens. And I certainly don't expect people to compensate me for my procrastination and my inability to read fine print, so if you live nearby and think you could fit your hips in some brand-new, still-betagged 36 (cough! cough!) x 34 slim-fit jeans, shoot me a private message and I can totally hook you up.

Also! Remind me to tell you the story about the time more than 30 days ago that I somehow ordered two boxes each of two different pair of totally cool sneakers. (I know. Who DOES something that dumb?) Bring your size 12 feet on by and see if they fit.

First come, first to get a bonus free cat.

Catastrophic crash + glow tape = theater magic

So Follies preview night was a smashing success, despite the fact that even with all my meticulous costume presets I still managed to mis-preset a pair of pants and completely lose into never-to-be-found thin air the giant overcoat I'm supposed to wear in the opening number.

But! I also learned some kind-of awesome Paramount Theatre lore: There is a rather unfortunately located column just offstage right behind the first masking curtain. I don't know if it's load-bearing or if it contains can't-be-moved electrical or plumbing lines but it's a person-wide tower of concrete that stands exactly where a person would naturally exit from the front of the stage. Plus -- like every backstage surface at every theater in the universe and beyond -- it's painted black. The Paramount Theatre stage crew has helpfully marked the corners of the column with glow tape and posted signs to call attention to its presence so actors don't crash dramatically -- as if there were any other way they'd do it -- into it as they leave the stage. But from time to time it's bound to happen, right?

And guess what? Not only does it indeed happen from time to time, but look at the tally marks in this picture. The stage crew actually keeps track of the crashes. WITH GLOW TAPE. And even though I've never seen a crash of glow-tape-worthy severity -- and I certainly understand and empathize with the people in the rushed, in-total-darkness-situations where such crashes could unfortunately occur -- I nonetheless see this glow-tape crash tally as pants-splittingly funny. And I know a thing or two about splitting your pants on stage. And it's always funny

So anyway. We open tomorrow at 2:00. And by 5:00 Sunday our three shows will be over and we'll all disperse to wherever my overcoat went until the next show that some of us do together. And now that I've jinxed myself by laughing so callously at the 11 mysterious strangers who've earned glow-tape tally marks and may have broken bones or lost teeth in the process, I'll probably earn the 12th hash mark before our run ends. And I'll probably be wearing the wrong preset pants when I do it.

We have an orchestra! We have costumes! I don't have a dress shirt!